
Fg & ( 



Class. 



Book. 




HOSPITAL DAYS 






l^ 



HOSPITAL DAYS. 



PRINTED FOR PRIVATE USE 



NEW YORK: 
I). VAN NOSTRAND, 192 BROADWAY, 



MDCCOLXVII). 



$r 



THE "SURGEON IN CHARGE," 

HONORED COMMANDER, 

TRUE COMRADE, 

BELOVED FRIEND, 

THIS LITTLE STORY OP THE HOSPITAL 

Jfs Jhiseribefc. 



FIRST DAYS 



In the Autumn of 1865, when the new Peace on 
all the hills and fields made them seem so sweet and 
fair, we found ourselves, a family long parted, explor- 
ing the by-roads in the north New Hampshire country. 
Following, one day, a winding green wagon-track, far 
from the main road, we came upon a desolate rough 
farm half way up the lower slopes of the Bartlett 
mountain. A dozen sheep were scattered over 'the 
stony fields, and among them sat a man in the full 
uniform of a Zouave, bagging trowsers, gay-braided 
jacket, cap, tassel, and long bright crimson scarf, com- 
plete. He had but just got home from some distant 
post, with very little back pay in his pocket for the 
sick wife, and none at all to spend in sober clothes, 
and had gone at once to work upon the obstinate 
farm, all in his gay attire. He seemed a little stunned 
by the silence round him. He 'missed the drums,' he 



said. We had a little talk over the old days already 
so distant although so near, and ' left him, the sun 
touching the red and the blue of his bright garments, 
tending his sheep under the solemn hills. 

One who sits and listens for the drums to-day seems 
like the Zouave among the she ep -crofts ; the flags and 
the music have marched so far away. And yet there 
may be some, in these times of gain-getting, pleasure- 
seeking, and "reaction," who are not sorry to look 
backward a little, now and then, and refresh from the 
old fountains their courage and their love of country. 



On a blue-and-gold day in the edge of November*, 
a hundred years ago, two ladies, with their luggage, 
were carefully packed into an ambulance, the chief con- 
veyance of the period, at the door of a Washington 
hotel. They were setting out — with an easy and cheer- 
ful-minded confidence in the unknown, which seems 
strange to them as they look back at it, but which must 
have been part of the spirit of the time — for a lonely 
outpost hospital to which they had been invited by 
the officer in charge, as supervisors of the nursing and 
cooking department. 

Through the unclean paste of Washington streets ; 
over the Long Bridge and the turbid river, hindered by 
endless wagon-trains, halted by German sentinels, who 
read the passes upside down ; along roads in which the 
heavy wheels turned back the soft soil as a plough 
turns the loam in the fields ; through little sparkling 
streams that rushed across the carriage-way ; by miles 
and miles of treeless, open, desolate country — fields on 
fields full of deep-red dwarf oaks, and low, thick, yellow 
shrubbery — in the smoky sunshine and sweet, spicy air ; 



10 

at last, climbing by long slopes a pleasant height, they 
came to the grove skirting the Hospital grounds, and 
wound up to the brick rear-court of a large quadrangle 
of buildings. 

The officer in charge came out to meet them, and 
took them over to their lodgings in the parsonage, a 
few yards from the central offices. They were so fortu- 
nate as to be assigned quarters in the house with the 
Chaplain and his family, and were shown into a large 
octagon-sided room, with bare, clean floor, two camp 
beds, with bed-sacks stuffed with straw, two little tables 
with regulation tin basins, and in the wide fireplace a 
huge black cylinder of sheet-iron, giving out a dull roar, 
and turning red here and there in spots. 

Out of the windows lay the sweetest country. Just 
below were the remnants of a garden — lilac, syringa, 
and straggling bushes on which two or three late, pale 
roses fluttered and hung. These stood up to their knees 
in the long, rough grass which covered the rolling ground 
down to the feathery edge of trees, and the deep-cut, 
yellow cross-roads. Beyond the road the red fields 
reached far away, and beyond the fields, curving and 
shining, moved the river. A streak of mist, and a 
steeple here and there, showed where the nearest town 
grovelled along the river's edge ; and on the left, looking 
through miles of airy purple, hung in the smoke of the 



11 

City, and the autumn vapor, the wonderful white dome, 
not yet lifting aloft, nor having the right to lift the 
finished figure of Liberty. Months and years made every 
gleam and shadow, every color and line of the landscape 
dear and familiar to the two who looked out upon it 
delighted, on the first day of their new life. 

The Hospital was a divinity school in the old days, 
but very early in the war-time professors and pupils fled 
away southward, in such unseemly haste to declare for 
the rebellion that doors were left ajar, women's gowns 
hanging in the cupboards, books lying open, face down- 
wards, on the tables. One of the first cares of the 
Surgeon in Charge was to have all these books collected, 
carefully boxed, and sent to the nearest provost-marshal 
for safe keeping. The deserted buildings first fell into 
the hands of brigade and division commanders, were 
occupied as headquarters for a few months, and were 
then set apart for General Hospital uses. 

The beautiful grove was spared by special order. The 
brick and stone buildings scattered through it, dormi- 
tories, class-halls, professors' houses, library and chapel, 
with the addition of a little village of barracks, made 
excellent accommodation for the sick. The ground falls 
away from this pleasant height on all sides but the south. 
Southward the brown waste stretches unbroken ; no 
fence, no tree, wide, desolate, but sweet ; dipping here 



12 



and there into ravines full of mist and soft color, climb- 
ing at last against the sky in other heights, where, for 
many months, rebels came and went at their pleasure, 
making strong their offensive defences, and flaunting 
their insolent banner. 



SPECIAL DIET. 



The morning after their arrival, the new-comers, who 
had already been formally mustered into the service of 
the United States, were put on duty in published orde"s, 
and were waited on in the store-room by the women- 
nurses in a body, somewhat prepared to resent if occa- 
sion offered, but soon melting and smiling on observing 
the unformidable aspect of the new authority. "Them 
dear lambs!" said old Mrs. B., afterwards, "what / 
was afraid of was caps." 

The store-room was a comfortable room in the centra 
or Administration building, over the main entrance, with 
the luxury of an open wood fire- and a wide window over- 
looking the barracks and the lovely view. Down the 
sides of this room ran shelves and cupboards for storing 
all manner of comforts ; regulation supplies proper to the 
Special Diet department, and outside gifts of all kinds 
which began to flow in at once, and continued flowing 
in a twice-blessed current all the days of the service. 
To this store-room was afterwards added a much larger 
room next door, nicely fitted up and bountifully filled 
with good things. 

An exploration was then made of every nook and 



16 

corner of the Hospital. A little ripple of smiles followed 
the Surgeon in Charge up and clown the wards, and the 
men to whom he spoke or whom he touched, loosen- 
ing or righting strap or bandage, looked proud and 
pleased. 

In the course of this tour of inspection the Superin- 
endent received a few words of instruction as to her 
position and its duties. She might visit in the wards, dis- 
tribute little extra comforts, talk to the men, write letters 
and ' sympathize' as much as she had time and inclina- 
tion for, but her serious business was to see that the 
women-nurses did their duty, and that the Special Diet 
vas everything that it ought to be. She was required 
o know what quantity and quality of raw material was 
iirnished by the Commissary Steward ; to see that this 
vas properly cooked, properly distributed from the diet 
kitchen, received in good order in the wards, carefully 
divided there ; that each patient got, without unlawful 
leakage, the exact articles ordered for him by the ward 
medical officer ; in short, she was expected to follow the 
food from the commissary store-house down the sick 
man's throat. 

To these duties the Superintendent added in her own 
mind, among others, that of learning whether the per- 
mitted articles were cooked according to the taste and 
fancy of the individual, knowing well that A. prefers salt 



17 



and B. sugar in the same kind of porridge, and disliking 
from her soul the tall-men-powders-short-men-pills sys- 
tem she has observed elsewhere. 

A chief special diet cook and five or six assistants 
were detailed for the kitchen, and a set ■ of printed 
forms and tables arranged by which everything was 
made methodic and easy. "Call my attention to any 
roughness you see in the working of this or that 
order," said the Surgeon in Charge; "Observe, observe 
continually ; your observation is worth more than my 
theory." 

Standing where she could see and sympathize with the 
' difficulties and scruples of authority,' as well as with 
the needs and helplessness of suffering, the Superin- 
tendent eagerly availed herself of the privileges of her 
position. The diet system was from time to time 
altered and improved, until a set of tables, blanks, and 
orders was fixed on, so " fitly framed together" that the 
little department moved, without undue friction, fairly 
and smoothly to the end. 

The Surgeon in Charge made the diet system the 
subject of much thought, observation, and care. " We 
must have order and economy," he said; "but we 
must also avoid all restriction in gratifying the lawful 
wants of the sick. The hospital fund is to be used, 
as far as possible, for the very men out of whose 

2 



18 



rations it is saved." He declared that patients and 
their needs could be classified to a great extent ; that 
it was safer on all sides to use, in the large proportion 
of cases, a set of fixed bills of fare specifying the 
proper dishes for each meal, rather than a miscellaneous 
list of articles from which inexperienced ward officer 
and captious patient should make up together their 
programme of a harmonious banquet. The Superin- 
tendent has in her possession many original orders 
on the diet kitchen, of which the following are speci- 
mens : 



Private H. (Inflammation of stomach.) Hot cakes, 
cheese and molasses candy. 

Private C. (Chronic diarrhoea.) Grated flour por- 
ridge, lemonade, oyster soup, oatmeal gruel and pep- 
permint tea. 

Private J. (Chronic diarrhoea.) 



BREAKFAST. 


DINNER. 


SUrPER. 


Coffee. 


Boast Beef. 


Oyster Soup. 


Steak. 


Fish. 


Raw Cabbage. 


Eggs. 


Boiled Cabbage. 


Cheese. 


Bread. 


Radishes. 


Bread. 


Butter. 


Bread. 


Butter. 


Milk-punch. 


Tea. 


Coffee. 



19 
Private K. (Typhoid fever.) 

BREAKFAST. DINNER. 



SUPrER. 



Mutton Chops. 


Beefsteak. 


Milk. 


Potatoes. 


Potatoes. 


Tea. 


Bread. 


Tea. 


Arrowroot. 


Coffee. 


Coffee. 


Cake. 


Doughnuts. 


Butter. 


Butter. 


Butter. 


Plum Pudding. 


Pudding. 



The Surgeon in Charge held that a roast-beef and pud- 
ding diet, an eggs and milk diet, a vegetable diet for men 
touched with scurvy, a milk-porridge diet, a beef-tea 
diet, and a gruel diet, would cover the majority of cases ; 
one entire table being changed for another as it stood, as 
often as was necessary for variety ; for the most delicate 
food given monotonously disgusts the sick person. Private 
Davidson, Ward D, for instance, was very fond of chicken 
stewed in rice, and a nice dish of it was prepared for him. 
The ward surgeon neglected or forgot to make a change 
in the diet order, and the chicken was duly sent day after 
day, until Private D. became so exasperated with the sight 
and even the smell of it, that weeks afterward when the 
same dish was brought for his next neighbor, he seized a 
moment when his comrade's back was turned, crawled 
from his bed and threw the whole mess, dish and all, out 
of the window. 



20 

The Surgeon in Charge thought it necessary, however, to 
leave some liberty, outside of all fixed tables, as the sick 
man's appetite sometimes requires tempting, not only with 
frequent changes, but with " home dishes " and dishes 
prepared to some extent after his own fancy. Badly 
wounded men too, often consume almost unlimited quan- 
tities of food and stimulants. For all such case special 
blanks were provided, on which any and all reasonable 
articles might be ordered by the ward surgeon. A little 
book of the gravest cases was kept in the store-room, and 
constant note taken of their needs and progress. The 
incessant, strenuous effort of the Surgeon in Charge was, 
to put it in a grand way, to make 

1 ' Perfect law commeasure perfect freedom. " 

The framework of the diet system is this : 

First (A). The Diet Table, a bill of fare or fixed carte 
drawn up by the Surgeon in Charge, prescribing the dif- 
ferent articles for each meal, under several general heads, 
with the exact quantity of each man's ration, in pounds, 
ounces, pints, etc., set down in the margin, thus : 

Private Jones, No. 1, is ordered by his ward surgeon 
" Eggs and Milk Diet." Referring from the return to the 
diet tables posted in the store-room and in all the wards, 
we see that "Eggs and Milk Diet " means that Private 
Jones is to have for : 



21 



BREAKFAST. DINNER. SUPPER. 

Milk pt.l Milk pt. 1 Milk pt. 1 

Eggs, poached, No. 2 Chicken oz. 8 Milk toast . . . . oz. 6 

Milk toast oz. 6 Custard oz. 6 Butter oz. 1 

Butter oz. 1 Bread oz. 4 Cheese oz. 1 

Second (B). The Ward Diet blank, or Return, in which 
every man's needs for the day are entered under his name 
and number. Private Jones, No. 1, Eggs and Milk Diet. 
Private Robinson, No. 2, Beef-tea Diet. One of these 
returns for each ward comes to the Superintendent every 
day in the morning. 

Third. The Ward Returns aggregated by the Super- 
intendent on one blank for the kitchen. 

Fourth (C). The Requisition on the Commissary Stew- 
ard for the raw material ; so many pounds, ounces, 
quarts, etc., based on the aggregate returns. 

This, for instance, is a copy of the requisition on the 
Commissary Steward for May 22, 1865, the number of 
patients on the Special Diet returns for that day being 
346. 

" The Commissary Steward will please issue for Special 
Diet: 

Bread lbs. 390 

Butter lbs. 40 

Milk qts. 350 



99 



Beef lbs. 130 

Chickens (11 pr.) 22 

Potatoes lbs. 125 

Onions lbs. 30 

Sugar... lbs. 30 

Coffee lbs. 10 

Pickles qts. 4 

Rice lbs. 15 

Dried apples lbs. 15 

Salt lbs. 7 

Oysters gallons 4 

Signed by the Superintendent." 

The lighter supplies, tea, loaf-sugar, eggs, dried beef, 
corn-starch, etc. ; tomatoes, cheese, fresh butter, sweet- 
meats, spices and wines, are issued from the store-room, 
and an account is kept in the Store-room Book of Issues. 
Voluntary supplies for general distribution are stored and 
issued in the same way. 

Fifth (D). The Commissary Steward's daily evening 
report, a duplicate of which is sent to the Superintend- 
ent. This shows the quantity of all raw material 
received, issued, and remaining on hand in the commis- 
sary store-house. 

Sixth (Ei). The order on the grocer or tradesman in the 
town, of which blanks signed by the Surgeon in Charge 
are furnished the Superintendent to be filled up by her 



23 



with the extra articles needed, not issued by either com- 
missary or medical purveyor, but to be bought out of the 
hospital fund. 

These papers check each other ; the Superintendent is 
required to keep copies of them all on file. At the end 
of the month the tradesmen's bills are sent to her to 
compare with the retained copies of the orders, when 
mistakes or fraud are easily detected. "But no theory 
is perfect," said the Surgeon in Charge, in one of his short 
lay sermons; "no system can be framed to exclude dis- 
honesty. Eternal vigilance is the price of Special Diet. 
Inspect, inspect continually." 

All mixed drinks, i. e., punches, egg-nog, mulled wine, 
wine-whey, lemonade, and acid fruit-drinks, and sherbets 
are prepared by the Superintendent, and issued when 
called for (F). 

In order that the occasional extra resources of the 
Hospital, or the gifts of friends, might be used with judg- 
ment and impartiality, the Surgeon in Charge had a little 
type-holder and printer's pad provided, with which the 
Superintendent could fill in blank spaces in the diet re- 
turns (B). The steward announced, let us do him the 
justice to say, with evident pleasure, "You can draw on 
the garden for green peas to-day, about so many bushels." 
The tipsy, but benevolent corporal in the printing-office, 
was always delighted to set up and the Superintendent to 



24 

stamp on a lot of ward returns the charming words, 
green-peas, or canned peaches, fresh fish, strawberries, 
corn-cake, tomatoes, tomato-omelettes, string-beans, etc., 
etc , and send the blanks round to all the wards. The 
ward officers could then fill in names and numbers as 
they liked, and there was not much danger of improper 
or unequal distribution. 



SUPERINTENDENT'S DAY 



The outline of a Superintendent's day, with digressions, 
is like this ; and all days — week-days, Sundays, and holi- 
days, are very much alike. 

Soon after breakfast, provided for over night, the 
ward returns begin to come in. A little rattle in the tin 
Post-Office box on the store-room door ; Ward A. is 
early to-day ; so much the better. It happened to the 
writer, visiting elsewhere and wanting to speak to the 
ward surgeon, to ask, "At what time does Dr. B. make 
his rounds?" " Well 'm," answered the ward master, 
" that depends on how drunk he was the night before." 
One after another the returns come in ; A, B, C, D, E, 
F, G, H, I, K, L, M, N, 0, P, Q ; sixteen of them to- 
day. They are aggregated on one sheet, quantities are 
estimated, and the requisition on the commissary steward 
made out. Supplies necessary from the Superintendent's 
store-room are estimated, and amounts entered in the 
store-room book. The stimulants are prepared and 
issued. The punches are compounded in huge caldrons 
with stop-cocks and drawn off into armies of ward bottles. 
Each man's bottle, is carefully re-washed before filling 
(ward bottle-washing not recognized), corked and re- 
labeled with adhesive label with his name and number. 



28 

The bottles are carried in butler's boxes to the wards and 
delivered to the women-nurses, through whom the special 
diet and extra delicacies of all sorts are distributed. 

It is time now and over-time to go to the kitchen and 
give directions about dinner. The kitchen is a very large, 
light basement room, under the Administration building. 
Here are two important requisites of efficiency in the 
special diet service ; a good central kitchen and rapid 
communication with all parts of the hospital. The fix- 
tures and utensils of the kitchen are abundant and of the 
best quality. Recipes, either regulation or modifications 
of Dutch and New England master-pieces, are plainly 
written out and posted on the walls in perpetual sight ; 
How to poach eggs ; Beef-tea, one ration ; Chicken soup, 
one ration ; Corn bread, one ration. Every dish is in- 
spected or tasted. The Superintendent confesses to a 
private silver spoon in the pocket of her apron. The 
main articles of food are, of course, prepared in bulk in 
large vessels, and measuring cans and ladles of various 
sizes hang in shining ranks against the walls. John is 
justly proud of his tin-scouring. 

Down one side of the kitchen runs a long dresser or 
table. Here are ranged in order the sliding shelves or 
trays of the diet wagon : A, a ; B, b ; C, c ; D, E, and 
F ; one or more for each ward, Hung on the wall, over 
the table, is the aggregated list ; the ' aggravated re- 



29 

turn/ John calls it, as if it were a kind of sickness. By 
long practice we all know to an invisible fraction how 
much is one ration, and how much ten or twenty rations 
of anything. If difference of opinion arises we weigh 
again. All fluids are carefully measured in cans of exact 
capacity. The great wooden ladles hold so many ounces 
of mashed potato and so many of custard, etc. The cov- 
ered cans, dishes, and jugs are set quickly on the trays 
and quickly filled. It is wonderful how rapidly this can 
be done with division of labor and practice. The trays 
are shoved through the long windows and lifted into the 
compartments of the wagon ; the doors of the wagon are 
buttoned to, and with the " double team" in blue and a 
guard behind, it sets out swiftly and smoothly along the 
railed plank-walk or tramway which runs all over the 
camp. The car halts in front of each ward ; the ward- 
room window goes up, the trays are passed through, and 
even at the uttermost barrack the mashed potato hurries 
in smoking hot. The car makes one or two journeys at 
each meal, according to the number of men in hospital, 
and after each meal runs about again and collects and 
brings in trays, cans, and dishes to be washed in the 
kitchen. The " wittles train," as the men call it, was 
somewhat long in coming to full perfection, but, "like 
the hundred-years flower of the aloe," we said, "this was 
worth waiting for." 



30 

The woman-nurse in each little ward-room receives her 
tray or trays, having her china plates and cups, her 
knives and forks and tumblers, set out in order before- 
hand ; divides the food according to a duplicate of the 
ward return hanging over her table, and the men-nurses 
carry it about. She follows immediately down the ward, 
helps and feeds those who are unable to help themselves, 
and sees that all have enough. If anything goes wrong, 
she is directed to send word at once to the Superintendent. 
She has means of heating over any simple thing if the 
patient does not incline to it at the fixed hour. A sick 
man will often take his food nicely if he may have his own 
time about it, and does not feel himself under observation. 
In critical cases a fresh ration is prepared instead of the 
rechauffe. The small special blanks (F) are meant for 
these and all other cases of emergency ; or the woman- 
nurse can have anything urgently needed at the moment, 
by sending her own written request for it. Extra rations 
of one or two articles — such as beef-tea, oysters, eggs — 
are always on hand in the kitchen. The Government 
ration is so generous that when honestly used there is 
almost always margin enough for extra calls without 
extra requisitions for raw material. The commissary 
steward, however, is required by the Surgeon in Charge to 
keep some trustworthy person in the storehouse ready at 
all times to fill such requisitions. 



31 

The Superintendent follows in the wake of the diet car. 
Such is the celerity with which the Defenders, even when 
ill, swallow their food, it is impossible to be in more than 
one or two wards while eating is actually going on. But 
by beginning at a different and unexpected ward and 
meal every day, the objects of an inspection are pretty 
well secured. " Was the gruel right?" "Did you get a 
full tumbler of punch?" " You are tired of the beef- tea? 
Grumble as much as you like." "But I don't want to 
grumble ; I aint got no complaints to make — only," — 

aside to Gr , "I'd as lief see the devil coming up the 

ward as that beef-tea!" 

Take a page at random from the Superintendent's 
shabby, little yellow note-book. What hospital nurse 
doesn't know the sort? "Gushing complains of the 
steak ; it is too rare." — The Superintendent observes 
with pain that the Defenders all prefer their steaks cut 
thin and fried. — "Jeffries wants more seasoning in his 
soup ; it is * too fresh,' he says, and Brooks must have 
his tomatoes raw, with vinegar. Thompson says the 
men-nurses are too slow ; he says he ' wants particular 
attention paid to him ;' he 'can't eat fish-hash,' and he 
' can't eat soup.' Bates wants ' crust coffee,' and explains 
to me how it should be made. No. 35 hasn't touched 
his breakfast. ' If he could only have some Boston brown 
bread.' Mem. : to try and get him some. Eustace is 



32 

tired of all his drinks ; try mulled sherry. Cocoa in F. 
poor and washy to-day. More small cans wanted for 
gruels. Ward return wrong' — explain to woman-nurse. 
Quinn running down ; try champagne in a long-spouted 
feeding cup. Mem. : to show nurse in K. how to get 
more dish-towels and hot-water cans for cold feet. Scott 
says he can't get along without 'jel' for his tea every 
night. Cut up No. 802 's chicken and feed him with 
it, on his intimation that he will eat it if I do ; he 
admits that it is not as bad as he expected." 

After the tour of the wards the chief cook comes 
for directions, and the tea, sugar, eggs, cheese, etc., 
for twenty-four hours, are weighed and counted out. 
The chief cook is an enthusiast in his profession, or 
rather in his calling, for he was a blacksmith when he 
enlisted. He came into the Hospital with fever, and, 
for some inscrutable reason, was, when convalescent, 
detailed to the diet kitchen. But he "took" at once 
to his new trade, learned rapidly, and showed great 
zeal and intelligence in it. His blacksmith's hand was 
light, accurate, and neat as a woman's. He took genuine 
pleasure in trying new dishes, and genuine pride in their 
success. He was often known to follow a ^.ice dish 
quietly down to the ward, and stand by, enjoying 
every mouthful the sick man swallowed. He was in 
"mild misery" if anything failed in flavor or seemed 



33 

stinted in quantity, and showed real delight when assured 
that such and such sick men began to mend on good 
food alone. May fair fortune and full rations follow 
him — clear-witted, kind-hearted, faithful Thomas Sul- 
livan, Special Diet cook. 

One day, this note went down in a hurry to the office 
of the Surgeon in Charge : 

"Dr. , 

" Etc., etc., etc. 
" Deae Sir : Sullivan, chief Special Diet cook, is ordered to 
report to the adjutant to-day before dress-parade, and from this 
time forth to play upon a drum ! Cannot the ' interests of the 
service ' secure him to the kitchen ? Surely he is more impor- 
tant there than in the drum corps of this Hospital. Please let 
him still flourish his wooden spoons instead of his drum-sticks." 

Here is the note officially ' returned,' endorsed, " Sul- 
livan is restored to his kettles, to remain as long as 
the Superintendent wishes." There were constant alarms 
of this kind about the detailed men. " The hospital sub- 
serves the army," said the Surgeon in Charge ; " my 
business is to return every man to the field as soon as 
possible." So they were swept away. Sometimes en- 
treaty prevailed, as in the case of Sullivan. Later, the 
organization of an Invalid Corps solved some of these 
difficulties ; but a sorrowful day came when request was 
made for even the best of the 'Invalids' to garrison 



34 

forts and guard roads, and set the strong regiments 
free for fighting ; and all the good men, clerks, nurses, 
and cooks, fitted out with various little camp-comforts — 
headed by Sullivan — marched away under the window of 
the Superintendent, who waved them a tearful good- 
bye. Sullivan came to no harm ; and many months 
afterwards, when his corps was at last disbanded, he 
went home, married his old sweetheart, bought an 
interest in another blacksmith's shop — and the man who 
can make the best beef-tea in Pennsylvania is pounding 
his anvil again. 

After supplies are issued, and instructions for supper 
given, there are stores to unpack and arrange, letters 
to write and answer, applications of all sorts to attend 
to from patients and nurses, and ward officers who 
look in to request this or that article sent down to 
the wards. The women-nurses usually take this time 
to report special cases and special needs, talk over ward 
business, and get Sanitary Commission or other outside 
supplies for the men. The Sanitary Commission made 
the Superintendent their representative at the post, and 
always promptly and generously filled her requisitions, 
sending out goods from the nearest station in their own 
wagons. 

Visitors from the City come in at all times, out of 
friendship, out of interest, out of curiosity. Some are — 



35 

how delightful! how refreshing! They lighten the 
day's work, they make a bright day brighter, and a 
dull day bright by their presence, their silence, and 
their speech. And some are — how wearisome ! when 
the work must go on before them, and they throw the 
columns into confusion with volleys of trivial talk ; 
and if 3-011 but offer a modest lunch out of a mess- 
basket for two. keep calmly asking for clean plates 
and tumblers. Then they compel you to go about the 
wards with them, and witness the distribution of their 
little gifts to all the most unworthy. Sometimes it is 
a party of old gentlemen, in civil hats and tumbled, 
yellow dusters — a Board — for the Hospital is much 
infested with Boards out of which nothing is ever 
builded. 

The men come freely, all day long, to the store-room 
to ' draw,' as they call it, tobacco, stationery, games, 
socks, etc. ; to tell their little stories, and show their 
home pictures and letters. It goes to one's heart to 
hear the clatter of the crutches on the stair, and the 
door is never shut except in the hours of necessary 
absence. The stream of visitors of this class is almost 
unbroken. They are the last before Tattoo, and some 
one is always waiting, pale and patient, for the opening 
of the door in the morning. It makes a little change 
from the ward for a convalescent. A soft cracker and 



36 



a tumbler of some harmless drink is always ready. 
How they love these harmless, anonymous drinks ! 
Who does not know the bottle ? Short and thick ; 
twine across the cork — as if the contents were lively ! 
a little over-leaked in the filling ; sawdust sticking to 
the leaky spot ; labelled, " Shrub for the soldier, from 
the East-Hallelujah Aid Society ;" a slow, sugary drip- 
drop, after patient pounding and shaking ; this, mixed 
with water and with a bit of ice in it, ' goes jest to 
the right spot ;' this ' makes him feel twice the man he 
was when he come up the stairs.' 

Then the little rest and talk, and the newspaper or 
magazine, and some trifle of a 'comfort-bag,' or pocket- 
comb, or the like, with the suggestion that the women 
at home are working and thinking for him, send a poor 
fellow back to his ward with a little freshness in his 
weary day. Many a glimpse of family history we get 
in this way ; many a simple, pathetic story of suffering 
and unconscious courage ; sometimes, very seldom, a 
wondrous tale — a tale to ' make your flesh creep' — 
of more than human valor and endurance. 

Between six and seven the duplicate ''Commissary 
Steward's evening report" rattles into the tin box on 
the door. This is taken in, the quantity of stores on 
hand compared with the probable needs of the next day 
or two, and the order on the tradesman filled out for 



37 

the steward's morning journey into town. The records 
of the day are filed away, the last draughts for the night 
mixed and sent to the wards, the last inquiries made 
and charges given concerning the worst cases, and then 
the slow, sweet bugle calls down rest — blessed rest — 
upon the camp, and the Superintendent's day, with its 
digressions, is ended. 



WOMEN-NURSES 



Was the system of Women-nurses in hospitals a failure ? 
There never was any system. That the presence of 
hundreds of individual women as nurses in hospitals was 
neither an intrusion nor a blunder, let the multi- 
tude of their — unsystematized — labors and achievements 
testify. So far as I know, the experiment of a compact, 
general organization was never fairly tried. Hospital 
nurses were of all sorts, and came from various sources of 
supply ; volunteers paid or unpaid ; soldiers' wives and 
sisters who had come to see their friends, and remained 
without any clear commission or duties ; women sent 
by State agencies and aid societies ; women assigned by 
the General Superintendent of Nurses ; sometimes, as in 
a case I knew of, the wife or daughter of a medical 
officer drawing the rations, but certainly not doing the 
work of a 'laundress.' These women were set adrift 
in a hospital, eight to twenty of them, for the most part 
slightly educated, without training or discipline, without 
company organization or officers, so to speak, of their 
own, "reporting" to the surgeons, or in the case of 
persons assigned by her, to the General Superintendent, 
which is very much, in a small way, as if Private 
Robinson should "report" to General Grant. 



42 



There was a standing misunderstanding on the 
question, for instance, who was authorized to supply 
women-nurses. An attempt was made, late in 1863, 
ostensibly to clear up this question. In order No. 351 
of the War Department, clause Two says : Women-nurses 
will be assigned only on application to the General 
Superintendent, unless, adds clause Three, they are 
specially appointed by the Surgeon General. Of course, 
surgeons in charge wishing to retain or employ nurses 
without the "certificate" of the General Superintendent, 
applied for their "special appointment" by the Surgeon 
General, which was promptly obtained. This, with other 
provisions of the order, practically abolished the office of 
General Superintendent of Nurses, and threw the selection 
into the hands of surgeons in charge, which, where the 
surgeon in charge was an 'honest gentleman' and a 
faithful and efficient officer, was a wise enough measure. 

The Roman Catholic system had features which com- 
mended it to medical officers of a certain cast of mind. 
The order and discipline were almost always good. The 
neatness, etc., were sometimes illusory. There were 
grave objections to the general introduction of such a 
system among American volunteer soldiers. There was 
nothing good in it that we also might not have had ; and 
taking the good, leaving the bad, and adapting the result 
to the uses of the country and the spirit of the time, we 



43 

might have had an order of Protestant women better 
than the Romish " sisterhoods." by so much as heart and 
intelligence are better than machinery. 

A friend, an officer in a neighboring hospital, once 
wrote to me : " You will be interested to know that we 
are just now in the midst of a war among the women- 
nurses, which has continued with varying intensity and 
fortunes, but with uniform clangor, among changing par- 
ticipants, and through different administrations, since the 
days of W. and McA. Nevertheless I stand by the sys- 
tem, convinced that the good which the faithful ones do 
far outweighs the mischief of the idle and the ' tonguey.'" 
The last sentence expresses, I think, the general experi- 
ence. The whole air and tone of a hospital ward change 
and rise after a few days of a woman's presence, and she 
is an invaluable auxiliary in the special diet department. 
Alack ! there be women and women, but let a nurse be 
ever so obstinate, ignorant, and flabby-minded, she will 
eagerly, even gaily starve herself to feed a sick soldier. 
She may be totally impervious to ideas of order ; she 
may love "hugger-mugger" and roundabout ways of 
getting at direct objects ; she may hopelessly muddle the 
ward returns, and interchange sentiment with the most 
obnoxious of the stewards, but she will cheerfully sacri- 
fice time, ease, and health, to the wants or whims of a 
wounded man. 



44 

Mrs. A had "come out," she told me "to cresh 

the rebellion," which she conceived she could best do by 
distributing inordinate quantities of what she called 

" sanitary jel." She had a difference with Mrs. C , 

who considered pickled cucumbers the proper weapons 
to use against the enemies of the country. 

Mrs. M announced with dignity, at our first inter- 
view, "I am a Daughter of Pennsylvania. You must 
have heard of Curtin's Daughters ? I have been in the 

field with the brigade, in such and such battles and 

such and such skirmishes. All this may be found in my 
journal." Then, after a little conversation, she revealed 
that she had given us the ' sign ' or pass-word of two or 
three orders, and as none had been 'taken up,' she 
inferred we ' was all right.' She had registered a vow 
not to serve with any "Sisters," or with members of any 
secret society. She gave also the details of an interview 
with the General Superintendent, who had visited the 
Hospital not long before. The nurse-corps paraded. 
" Here," said the child of the Keystone State — she looked 
hard at me, and says she, " So you're the regiment 
woman !" at which I drew myself up and looking back as 
good as her, says I, "No, madam," says I ; "I am not 
the regiment woman, I am the brigade woman !" 
Whether the new administration was disappointing or 
fresh fields of laurels unfolded elsewhere, I do not know, 



45 

but in a few weeks ' letters requiring her presence at 
home ' arrived, and the Daughter of Pennsylvania was 
seen no more. 

Miss D was an excellent little creature, gentle- 
mannered, delicate, tremulous, full of intense and indig- 
nant patriotism. Night and day found her unflagging in 
her place. Watch had to be kept over her lest she 
should never get proper food or rest. She could not 
work by rule or method. She lost the law in the excep- 
tions. She took what she thought "short cuts," and 
hand-to-mouth ways of doing what systematic effort 
would have accomplished in half the time. She was full 
of goodness and devotion. When she was not at a 
patient's pillow she was hurrying eagerly to the store- 
room to collect comforts and tell the abuses and atroci- 
ties she had seen. She thought all military restriction 
atrocious. She wanted "to go and see Mr. Lincoln 
about it." Her health gave way before the end of the 
war and she went home. We were very sorry to part 
with her. I am afraid the generous heart that beat so 
fast is scarcely beating now. 

Mrs. H- , wife of the commissary sergeant, one of 

the most capable and faithful of our men, had a placid, 
sweet face, that might do a sick man good to look on. 
Her dress was simple and fresh, her voice, even her 
manner, quiet and soothing She had a fever while she 



46 



was at the Hospital, and was too delicate to do much 
service in nursing ; but it was comfortable to know that 
she was moving about the ward, restraining roughness 
by her gentle presence, and overlooking the distribution 
of the food and stimulants. 

Miss S was a German who had followed a relative 

to the Hospital, and asked for employment as a nurse. 
She had her virtues and her uses, chief of which was in- 
terpreting between the ward surgeon and the German 
patients. She was a famous knitter of nice woolen socks. 
She supplied and repaired the whole ward. But she 
could not resist feeding her ' browthers ' clandestinely, 
with the delicacies of their native land, made in the 
nurses' mess kitchen. One of these was a warm and 
washy beverage called " beer-soup," and another was an 
anonymous mixture of something like glue, cabbage, and 
"pot-scrapings." We rather winked at the beer-soup, 
for beer in any shape is such a comfort to the brave 
Teuton, but the pasty compound was too much for pro- 
fessors of Special Diet, to say nothing of exasperated 
surgeons. 

Mrs. B showed the advantage of some previous 

training in a civil hospital in Massachusetts. Although 
of lower grade in refinement and education than 
most of the other nurses, she came in more intelli- 
gently to system and worked more efficiently under it. 



47 

She was keen and wary. No cheat or malingerer could 
deceive her for a moment, "though there's a verse of 
scripter in the Bible," she said, "which tells us they'll 
deceive the very elect." Trim and neat as wax in person 
and work, her qualities soon told on her ward. Bed- 
quilts hung no more awry, and blankets were folded over 
straight and smooth. Crusts and parings, sloppy and 
cloudy cans and tumblers, crumpled newspapers and 
greasy cards disappeared from the little bedside tables. 
A glass as clear as light, with a flower in the season, or a 
little green spray, a smooth napkin, a freshly- washed 
feeding cup for the drink, a game-box, a book from the 
library, took their places. White curtains appeared in 
the windows, or green where the light needed softening 
to the sick eyes, prints on the walls, rocking-chairs 
swinging to and fro with heroes, up and down the long, 
board floors. The cups and plates in the little ward- 
room glistened wiih cleanliness, and even the ugly stoves 
began to shine. 'Loud conversational blasphemy' and 
the banging of doors went out of favor. One of the first 
things she ' drew ' from the ' Sanitary ' — why do so 
many honest people always use the qualificative instead of 
the noun ? — was a lot of soft, light slippers for the men- 
nurses in the ward. She knew that the heavy creak of a 
boot is almost as intolerable to a patient as a ' sympa- 
thizer' sitting on the edge of his bed. She knew what to 



48 

ask for and what to do with it. No discharged, disabled 
man, or helpless, furloughed man ever left her ward with- 
out a report of the case at the store-room and an outfit of 
comforts for the journey. No crowd of new patients 
came in, in ever so great confusion, without a quick, dis- 
criminating survey of their real and immediate wants and 
a similar report and supply. She possessed what many 
better educated women never attain — the ability to post- 
pone the non-essential to the essential, and to distinguish 
clearly between them. 

For more than three long years she served in her place 
without a furlough. A ' little good black tea ' was the 
only luxury, an occasional drive to the City to take a sick 
boy to the Commission's lodge the only holiday she 
wanted. She had quinsy, dysentery, and small-pox 
during her term of service, and would hardly give up for 
either malady until threatened with a sentinel at her 
door. From morning till night, and often through the 
cold, dragging hours till morning again, she could stand 
unwearied, or sit within call in her little ward-room, with 
her spectacles and her Bible, the only book she ever 
opened, or her half-knitted sock or mitten. Alas ! she 
was scarcely ever ' on terms ' with the other nurses, and 
finally boasted: "Me and them don't speak — none of 
us." This was all very well till she was taken ill with 
small-pox, when Miss H., who had curls, and feelings, and 



49 



testimonial bracelets from her patients, and a sentimental 
correspondence with two or three discharged ones, and 
who for these amiable weaknesses had suffered much from 
Mrs. B.'s criticisms, volunteered to nurse her, and did it 
so faithfully and kindly that Mrs. B. was melted and took 
her into superfluous forgiveness again. The only touch 
of sentiment I ever saw in Mrs. B. was over some delicate 
china tea-cups, sent as a present for the Superintendent's 
little mess. "They jest make one dream of home," she 
said ; she ' wanted to cry over 'em.' 

The men-nurses fared scarcely better than the women 
at her hands. "I don't take no orders from a reduced 
corporal /" I inadvertently heard her answer one clay to 
a mild suggestion of the wardmaster, whose military 
career she had been looking up. But she was loyal to 
the powers in office. A malcontent went to her room 
with some grievance concerning the Surgeon in Charge. 
" I jest opened the door, and sot a chair outside, and says 
I, will you please to take a seat in the entry, sir ? I don't 
want no one in my apartment who comes a grumbliu to 
me with acquisitions against my superior officers !" 
" He's a father to me !'" — she insisted, of the Surgeon in 
Charge, who might be thirty years her junior — "he was 
always a father to me !" 

The patients were very fond of her, as well they might 
be, for most of her quarrels and all her little plots and 



50 

wiles were in their service and favor. She left the camp 
with the last of the sick in August of 1865, and after too 
short a rest, took a place again in a civil hospital in 
Massachusetts, where she died in a few months, broken 
down, no doubt, by her toils and vigils in the army. 



GIFTS TO SOTDIERS 



The Sanitary Commission generously filled all our re- 
quisitions. We did not very often call on them, believing 
that their supplies were more useful and more necessary 
on the field, or in the wake of the armies. Private 
friends, and some, friends though strangers, sent us many 
good things, part of the great mass of offerings taken no 
account of in any published estimate of the gifts of the 
people to their soldiers. Barrels of flannel shirts and 
socks, gallons of choice wines and liquors, casks of home- 
made pickles very different from the coppery cucumber of 
the regulation ; all these could be had unasked, or for the 
asking. "Why send the very old Port?" I heard some 
one remonstrate with Mr. W. of New York ; "wouldn't 
the next best do?" "No!" was the answer ; "it is the 
best a man has that belongs to God — and the army." 
Among many such gifts came four boxes of London Port, 
which had this little story : The wine was sent by an 
English gentleman to Miss Nightingale, in the Crimea. 
It arrived just after the hospitals were broken up, and was 
returned with other parcels to the storehouse in London, 
where it was kept for a long time, and finally sold for 
some army charity. The purchaser sent it, for the sake 



54 

of its history, to his friend, Mr. D., of New York, and so 
it came to ns. 

Here is a list of one lot of gifts among many from Mrs. 
: Eighty-six flannel shirts, thirty-six pounds con- 
densed milk, one cask sherry, one cask brandy, one cask 
porter, one box tea, ten gallons wine, twelve gallons 
sweetmeats, one cask pickled mangoes and tomatoes. 
Mr. A., of New York, sent forty-eight Boston rocking- 
chairs. Mr. Ware, of Boston, known and blessed in many 
camps and hospitals, sent a large and excellent box of 
games. Others sent saws, files, chisels, bits and bit- 
stocks, knives and tools of all kinds for carving, drawing- 
paper and pencils, slates, puzzles, and books — good stand- 
ard books, travels, biographies, and stories, not reports of 
societies for 1850, exploded Railroad Guides, and Child's 
First Readers with one leather cover torn off. Of these, 
indeed, we received altogether about a barrel full, and 
turned them in to be sold for the local fund. One hos- 
pital worker in bone, who learned to carve in relief, and 
to cut cameos with great delicacy, was, on his discharge 
from the army, furnished by his father, a New England 
farmer, with money to go abroad and study, and is now 
one of the honorable band of American sculptors in 
Italy. 

No one can count up the value of these things, not 
only in the flannels for discharged, broken-down men, and 



55 

woolen socks and mittens for convalescents going on 
guard in puddles of snow-water, but the distraction from 
pain in wounded men, the occupation and interest fur- 
nished to wretched, bored, half sick, half well, wholly 
demoralized men who huddle in a hopeless way round the 
"red-hot sheet-iron stoves." I have seen a bagatelle 
table revolutionize the sulkiest "convalescent" ward in 
camp. In another a dull despondent set of yesterday will 
be carrying on a brisk match from the spelling-games to- 
day, and here is poor little F. with tremulous lips and 
bright eyes, being slowly dragged up with port-wine and 
arrowroot, but ready to cry at a word — sitting up with 
the solitaire board, pegging away, all over smiles. Ser- 
geant Gr. has established an arithmetic class, and all the 
new slates are in request. A German is learning English 
on his, and writes me a little note on it at every visit, and 
the wardmaster, a bright, kind, and capable young fellow, 
has made excellent progress on his, in French, with the 
help of an old grammar, interpreted by the courtly and 
cheerful Charmoille, the Frenchman with the right arm 
gone. 

But who shall count the comfort of the rocking-chairs ? 
The little swinging motion seemed to work off some- 
thing of the nervous irritation and pain. They were 
covered all over with a blanket and stuffed with pillows. 
The high back gave rest to the weary head, and a bit 



56 

of board laid across the arms supported the wounded 
hand, or the book, or game-box. Clyruer, of a Penn- 
sylvania regiment, had one side of his face, with one 
eye torn away, and could not lie down at all. He said 
never an Impatient word during the many weeks of his 
suffering, and when his rocking-chair came, ' thought lie 
didn't want anything more now, in the whole world.' 
The Book of Nonsense-verses, 

" There was a young lady in Spain 

Who couldn't go out in the rain, 
So she married a fella' who owned an umbrella. 

This artless young lady of Spain, etc., etc., 

had a great run, beginning with a long-faced "party* - 
who 'didn't care about it, well, really now, no, thank 
you,' and 'wondered what in the world people could 1 
— etc., etc., and ended by shouting over it, and keep- 
ing it a great deal too long for the patience of the next 
man. " Brown, Jones, and Robinson" made the tour of 
the wards. B. of the 12th Maine, was particularly fond 
of them. B. was himself an amusing spectacle. He was 
really badly hurt, but drew such a fishy expression over 
his eye, and was so dismal for three minutes while 
you were asking about him, and made something be- 
tween a grievance and a virtue of not having eaten his 
breakfast, and thought he could ' worry down ' an oys- 
ter or two, and took a pint of them on the spot, and 



57 



then laughed all over — dangerously — at Robinson's dog 
being carried off by the Austrian mouchard, which he con- 
sidered much the funniest thing in the book. Then there 
was a delightful black boy scuffling on a spring-board. 
The wards were continually sending up to borrow him, 
and offering to ' whistle all day ' for him to dance. 

The Reading Room, with maps and pictures, files of 
papers, books, and stationery, was a great resource for 
those who were well enough to get to it, and an induce- 
ment to convalescents to leave the moody circle round 
the stoves in cold weather. Books circulated in the 
wards, and there were always half a dozen daily "Chroni- 
cles," and plenty of picture-papers for the men in bed. 
They enjoyed looking up their own skirmishes, and one 
couldn't delight them more than by affecting to recognize 
them ; "There you are, over the parapet, waving the 
colors ; I should know you in a minute !" There was a 
Dore-like sketch once in 'Harper's Weekly,' a troop-train 
of open cars rushing through the great Cumberland Cut. 
With the deep shadows and the little points and dashes 
of light touching a thousand confused and clustered 
bayonets, it was very effective. This was popular among 
the men ; they would have it torn out and fastened 
against the barrack walls. The barrack walls showed the 
changes, too, in popular sentiment. One hero came down 
and another went up. First, there was Major Anderson. 



58 

Then there was " Little Mae." in every size and color ; 
Mac. leading the skirmishing fight in Western Virginia ; 
Mac. at the head of his gorgeous staff ; Mac. the husband 
and father ; Mac. by the camp-fire, planning a (Peninsu- 
lar) campaign ; Mac, alas ! going on board a gunboat. 
Then he came down and, Burnside's wounded men coin- 
ing in, Burnside went up. 'Burnside's wounded' wouldn't 
suffer a word to be said against him. " He's every inch 
a gentleman and a soldier," one of the worst hurt said to 
me. Then came Hooker and Sherman and Sheridan 
and Grant, and Thomas with his placid, fatherly face and 
slouch hat. Later, General Howard was a favorite. 
" He's a Christian," said Thomas Tully, of the New York 
73d ; " I've lived near enough to him to know him for a 
Christian, though I am but a poor one myself." These 
appeared and disappeared on the barrack walls. Mr. 
Lincoln was always there ; crowned with immortal green 
at Christmas, garlanded with field-flowers in May, draped 
with flags after victories and after defeats alike, till the 
dark day in April when the men came with streaming 
tears to beg a bit of crape to cover the face. 

Soldiers were omniverous readers, but many wanted a 
better order of books than novels and magazines. One 
of the frowziest of the ' inv'lids ' was a devourer of 
everything Mr. Sumner wrote. Files of the Scientific 
American were in demand. The parsonage Cicero 



59 

and the store-room Shakespeare went about the wards. 
Dickens was very popular. I think David Copperfield 
was the favorite story. Devotional books were cheerfully 
accepted and often faithfully read. Dr. Newman Hall's 
"Come to Jesus" was always liked. Once only, this 
happened : a Defender came for a needle-book, and hav- 
ing unrolled and carefully examined it, naively took out 
a tract he found in it, and left it on the table, as some- 
thing he had no use for. 

The voluntary gifts of friends were very useful in fitting 
out discharged, helpless men for the journey back to the 
poor home. These men had often lived up to their pay, 
sending it home, and having no further claim on Govern- 
ment, would have been utterly destitute but for outside 
supplies. We felt that men returned to duty too, if they 
had families dependent on them, had peculiar claims upon 
us. In December of 1863 there was a general clearing 
out and sending to the field of men who were determined 
to "go straight to Richmond, batter down the prison 
doors and let the prisoners out." These went away in 
fine spirits and good flannel shirts, with mittens to handle 
the cold fire-arms and do the camp work with. The 
mittens and gloves were capital for the hospital guard. 
There were some days when 

" The wind was turned to bitter North 
That was so soft a South before," 



60 

when the .sponge baths in the quarters were solid, and the 
sponges round and hard as paving stones, and every 
barrack window had to be curtained and stuffed with 
blankets. Looking out of the store-room window we 
could see the tall sentinel tramping by underneath, up 
and down, up and down. The ' relief comes occasion- 
ally, but it is cold work for men not over strong. We 
look at his big, red, cold hands, and wonder if it is 
conduct unbecoming a Superintendent and a lady to 
astonish him with a pair of mittens dropping out of the 
sky. He disappears round the corner ; appears again ; 
great paws redder and stiffer than before. We seize a 
pair from the shelf, and as the tramp, tramp, comes under 
the window, say sternly, " Guard !" drop and fall back. 
Sometimes one catches us, looks up, grins, bows, and 
says, "Oh! thank you!" Sometimes one doesn't, and 
stealthily looking out again we observe him tramp, 
tramping away from us, pulling on the mittens and 
spreading out his fingers fan-wise, and eying them with a 
satisfaction which seems to come out through his back. 

The choice wines and liquors sent us were always 
useful. Government provision was ample and even 
munificent in many things. In others the supply was 
inadequate, or the quality poor, or the routine process of 
' drawing' a little too deliberate for emergencies. One 
might think for instance, that in the ordinary wear and 



61 

tear of hospital use and washing, old sheets, shirts, etc., 
might be had in quantities sufficient to supply all the rags 
needed. But not a garment or fragment of a garment 
can be used until it is regularly inspected and condemned, 
and all must be laid away in the linen-house till the 
inspecting officer comes down on his regular tour. The 
operations cannot wait for the Inspector and we must 
have rags, bandages, etc., always ready in abundance. 

Then what a resource were the Borden's cans of con- 
densed milk, when now and then after heavy rains the 
country wagons could not ford the streams and the milk- 
man never got in at all, or in the hot mid-summer, when 
in spite of precautions the milk got in all sour. "Tarra- 
gona," the hospital substitute for port-wine, so useful in 
chronic Diarrhoea cases, was wretched stuff. All the 
port-wine and all the good brandy we used came from 
private sources. The quarterly supplies of porter and 
sherry were entirely inadequate, even with the close 
watch of the Surgeon in Charge over the Dispensary ; so 
were the supplies of corn-starch and farina, while of 
cocoa, barley, gelatine (requiring brandy, loaf-sugar, 
lemons and much time and trouble to make it available in 
jelly which scarcely a Yankee would touch) and one or 
two other things, we had preposterous quantities. The 
gelatine we made useful chiefly in clear-soup, but vast 
accumulations of barley over and above all possible broths 



62 

and gruels, must have gone back at last upon the hands 
of the purveyor. That wretched man must have been 
buried in barley-cans at the end of the war. 

It was a pleasant task to receive and give out these 
voluntary supplies. They were hampered with no regu- 
lations. All articles, except those for eating and drink- 
ing, were free as air to any who were in need, and the 
others were worked into the Special Diet system or 
reserved for the gravest cases. No rule was more neces- 
sary than the one forbidding the indiscriminate giving out 
of food and drink in the wards. No evasion of the rule 
was tolerated. Permission in proper cases was always 
easily got. I suppose the restriction bore sometimes 
hardly upon the ' sympathizer ; ? perhaps occasionally on 
the patient ; but think of the labor and anxious nursing 
and watching and preparing of delicate little messes for 
weeks, made naught by the visitor of an hour with his 
clandestine pie and sausage. 

The Surgeon in Charge directed us to aim at strict 
impartiality in all our distributions. He was often 
annoyed by the visits of special agents who singled out 
men here and there and left the others disappointed. 
A nice basket of comforts pushes in at the door ; air of 
expectancy and pleasure on every pale face ; all the 
frowzy heads come up above the blankets. "Any 
Alaska soldiers here?" asks the cheery voice behind 



63 

the basket. None, evidently, for all the pale faces 
and frowzy heads retire despondently under the blankets 
again. The Surgeon in Charge, present on one such 
occasion said, — "These are United States soldiers, my dear 
madam ; pray treat them all alike as nearly as possible." 
He was usually at war with State Agents, a veritable 
' Ursa Major' we told him, with them, and evidently 
deprecated their existence. I believe he would if he 
could, have blotted out all evidence of State organization. 



CHAPLAIN'S DAY. 



The Hospital acknowledged the blessing of a faithful 

Chaplain. Chaplain was ready at the lightest call, 

from sunrise to moonrise, and no night was too black or 
stormy to find him in the farthest corner of the camp 
bringing comfort to some soul in pain. The duties of 
the office were many and laborious. Besides the regu- 
lar church services and writing of sermons, the singing 
and prayer-meetings, Bible and Sunday School classes, 
funeral rites and constant ministrations to the sick and 
dying, there were the official Death and Burial Records 
to keep, the ' Moral condition and History ' of the 
Hospital to write up for the Adjutant General ; the 
Reading-Room and Post Office to overlook, including 
the franking of soldiers' letters, sometimes thirteen 
hundred in a week ; "effects" to box and send home, 
and letters, perhaps twenty-five or thirty a day, to 
write to soldiers' families. 

It was always touching to see the poor little bun- 
dles of " effects " going over to the parsonage ; they 
were sometimes so very small ; I remember one 
entry ; — " Effects, one pair of shoes." And the shoes 
told such a story ; tied together and slung across the 
frayed and faded coat, the knapsack of varnished cloth 



68 



all cracked and shabby, — the poor, broken, trodden- 
down shoes, still stained and furrowed with the mud 
of so many weary marches. 

The letters to soldiers' families were no common, 
formal statement of facts. They must be framed with 
care and conscience. They carried precious things; the 
note-book leaf, the hymn-card, the lock of hair, the plain 
gold ring ; they carried the last look backward of the 
parting soul ; " Tell her I kissed her picture and wished I 
had been a better man ;" the little, little gleam of light 
across the darkness of the invisible country; " He said 
some words at last that seemed like prayer." How 
difficult such correspondence must often be, the Chaplain's 
memoranda show. 

"Irrational since the day of his arrival. 

Died in the ambulance at the door. 

Does not want me to write home ; has no message. 

Says he 'does not get ahead any with religion.' 

Wandering; one minute charging with his regiment and 
the next with his mother at home. 

Irrational ; cried out, "Mother, you are wanted," and 
died. 

Dying said ; " The room is growing dark ; are they put- 
ting out the lights ?" On the fly-leaf of his little diary 
was written : ' It had been better for them not to have 
known the way of righteousness.' 



69 



Could not understand ; commended him to God's mercy, 
could not hear." 

Part of the Chaplain's burden was the hourly watch 
that no chance of speaking for the better life, should by 
any means be missed. It was literally speaking — 

" As never like to speak again, 
And as a dying man to dying men." 

It was patiently, painfully following the wandering soul 
through the perplexed mazes of fever, through the exalta- 
tion and horrible reaction of drugs and stimulants, through 
the craze of chloroform, to find the one sane and clear 
moment in which the name of the Lord Christ could be 
spoken. 

Perhaps the saddest service was receiving soldiers' 
friends who came, often too late, or came to see ' those 
who had tended him,' or to hear ' something more about 
him;' — always the craving for 'something more' — or to 
see ' the place where he was lying.' After H.'s death and 
burial, his mother came to see him. She was a gentle, 
sweet-faced old lady, with soft, pale cheeks and lovely 
gray hair. G. took her out to the graveyard, neat and 
quiet, where he lay. "Will you plant something on his 
grave?" she asked. "Oh, yes," said G., "what would 
you like?" "I would like a white rose, dear." G. prom- 



70 



ised. " Would you kiss me, dear?" she said ; and Gr. put 
her arms round her neck and kissed her soft, old cheek 
with tears. I heard a strange moaning in the lower hall 
one day, like the cry of some wounded creature, and 
going quickly down the staircase, found S.'s poor old mo- 
ther, who had come alone from far out West, to see him, 
not knowing how rapidly he had failed. She had stopped 
at the Registry Office door, and, giving in the name, was 
thoughtlessly answered by the clerk in one word, "Dead." 
We got her up stairs and made her some tea, and she sat 
in a chair by the window, bending to and fro, and moan- 
ing softly all the afternoon, and saying not a word. Only 
the next day she was able to hear how good and faithful 
he had been as a nurse to his comrades, and how peaceful 
in his death. 

The Chaplain was called on frequently to visit and 
bury the ' contrabands' whose poor little huts hung upon 
the edges of the camp and were scattered over the fields 
all the way to the City. After the second Bull Run 
battle large numbers of blacks gathered about the 
Hospital and were kindly treated, the men being 
employed in policing and the women as laundresses, all 
receiving Government rations. So great however was 
the temptation afforded by their abject ignorance that 
they were at one time nearly starved by an acting 
commissary steward, who was summarily dealt with by 



71 

the Officer in Chief and made to discharge his evil-gotten 
gains. 

We always had a representative or two of the race at 
work in our quarters, delighted with wages and spending 
them chiefly in ribbons and copper trinkets in the town. 
Coming back after a furlough we find the last new Topsy 
of the establishment seated over against us at the 
bedroom wood-fire, a magnificent heap of blazing, 
crackling hickory logs, for we have begged to have the 
black cylinder with the roar, taken away. Topsy sits 
and gazes at us, and says from time to time ; — "I know 
what your name is." — " 'Miss' Leighton's got a baby." — 
"That there sack you've got on 's pretty." — "I dunno as 
ever I see a breast-pin like that, afore." She goes out, 
and presently returns, without knocking, actually to 
re-examine the bath-gloves, which fill her with astonish- 
ment, ostensibly because ' she thought she heered me 
call,' and indicating with her shining elbow the letter- 
paper scattered on the table, she wants to know if I am 
writing to my " beau." 

The huts about us, first homes of the wandering, 
sorrowful race, were strange patchwork ; bits of shelter- 
tents and blankets, ends of plank, barrel staves, logs and 
mud, but most of them were neatly whitewashed and 
with the likeness of a little, fenced garden behind, and 



72 



near many and many, by the roadside, was a rough grave 
with a red-wood cross at its head. 

The huts and the gardens are gone, and the forlorn 
graves were trodden long ago into the fine, white dust of 
the Virginia highway. 

In some of the Chaplain's cares nurses and Superin- 
tendent could share, as in writing of letters, etc., but the 
regular, methodical business was of necessity in his own 
hands, and was performed with utter devotion ; ' done to 
the Lord,' heartily, and not to men, and done through 
circumstances of peculiar domestic anxiety and trial. 
The Chaplain's wife, herself an invalid, constantly visited 
and distributed comforts among the sick, and the 
parsonage children carrying their oranges and their 
bunches of wild-flowers and their picture-papers, were a 
real ' streak of sunshine' in the wards. It was pleasant 
to see the men fondle and talk to them, taking out their 
family pictures and comparing height and color ; "He 
was a bit of a baby then — but he might now be just 
about as big as you." They were always pleased with 
little stories of the parsonage children's plays and talk ; 
especially, I remember, with this one : Says little 
Johnnie, "Mamma, do the angels come down to us in 
the night? and" — with anxiety — "could I see one if I 
was to wake up quick?" — "Oh no, Nonnie" — answers 



73 



Eddie the youngest, "we haven't got the rigid hind of 
eyes." 

Occasional help in preaching, etc., was to be had from 
the City and the near forts, and from among the patients. 
The Superintendent sometimes found time to sing and 
read hymns in the wards, and was rewarded by the com- 
ments of such a slow boy as Bailey who drawls, — "Dear 
me, those hymns sound altogether different when you 
read 'em and when I read 'em myself." Reverend Mr. 
Dickerson a detailed man, nurse in Ward E, sometimes 
held service. Captain A. assisted at the meetings. He 
was one of seven sons of a widow. Four brothers were 
in the field ; one was at home disabled from wounds and 
the youngest was an invalid. When the sixth son 
enlisted, the Captain followed the Chaplain's advice, — 
as he would not be ready for heavy duty for six 
months, — resigned and took up his theological studies 
again. 

The Chaplain's labors had their compensations even 
at the moment. Many owed their acknowledgment of 
Eternal Truth to him. Many simple, heroic, Christian 
souls passed in his review, some going homeward, some 
heavenward, some back into the smoke of the fight 
refreshed and renewed for either death or life. I quote, 
from memoranda made by him, a case or two among 
hundreds. 



74 

"J. B . Sinking ; knew no one, but recognized the 

name of Jesus and the tune, but not the words of the 
hymn we sang. 

W. J says, "Write to my wife and tell her 

before this reaches her I shall be no more. I rest on 
Jesus and on Him alone. I see His blood. Tell her to 
let my bones lie here. — / shall be in Heaven. I leave 
her and the children in God's hands.' 7 

W. . Chronic Diarrhoea ; emaciated to the last 

degree ; says, " Write to my father just how I am ; don't 
conceal anything. I am giving you a great deal of 
trouble but it strengthens me to have you here." I 
asked 'do you rest your hope of salvation on Christ?' 
He answered "I can do nothing else." 

James T . Had both feet amputated after wounds 

at the second Bull Run fight. Dictated a letter to. his 
mother; "I am as comfortable as can be; doing first- 
rate. God has supported me. My trust is in Him. I 
hope I shall have no discouraging word from you. It 
was you who taught me to trust in God. Before my 

legs were amputated I gave the Bible to to send 

to you not knowing how it would fare with me. I have 
the best of attention and food. Send me an account of 
how they got along with the hop-picking. I always 
enjoyed that season. Don't be scared. I consider myself 



75 



worth a number of dead men yet." This noble fellow 
got well and went home. 

Wm. McC . Peacefully trusting in Christ. Ex- 
pressed no anxiety to recover. As I was trying to 
repeat a psalm from memory, prompted me in the 
verses. Said, "Write to my father and tell him I am 
very ill ; that my whole trust is in Jesus." Later he said 
"I want my family to know that religion has sustained 
and comforted me," and stretching out his arms cried, 
" Jesus I am coming," and so died. 

Color-Sergeant D . Shot through the right shoul- 
der, had repeated hemorrhages. When sinking he said, 
"Tell my mother I die in a good cause. I have carried 
the flag over the land of the brave and the free ! Don't 
let those traitors run away with the country ! Don't let 
them destroy the country ! They should not as long as 
I could stand on my feet." I said ' Thanks be to God 
who giveth us victory.' He answered, "Yes; He con- 
quers for me. I look to Christ for pardon." He died 
that night." 

The chapel services were always well attended, except 
now and then in times of great sickness and heavy 
work, or when the Hospital was temporarily thinned 
out. The week-day prayer meetings were greatly en- 
joyed by the men. The Chaplain was an Episcopalian, 
but instead of discouraging these assemblies as some 



76 

Chaplains 1 have known, he quietly took possession of 
them and so secured their being carried out with order 
and decorum. The prayers were like what only the 
the prayers of men in the almost visible presence of 
death will be, if they pray at all. There were some 
men with special gifts of fervor. How H. prayed ! We 
called him "the man who prayed so loud." I remember 
one night in particular ; H. was to go back to the field 
next morning ; it was the eve of some great movement or 
battle. He prayed for himself and his comrades ; for the 
Surgeon in Charge ; for the country. He took hold on 
Heaven. How the strong voice rang out again and again 
through the deep stillness of the camp ; "I will not let 
Thee go, unless Thou bless them all ! It may be the last 
time I can call on Thee, Lord ; I will not let Thee go !" 
A few days afterward word came back that H. was shot 
through the heart in a charge of the regiment. And 
how they sang ! Was there ever anything like the singing 
of two or three hundred men in the shabby blue coats, on 
crutches, with heads bound up, and arms in slings, or 
empty dangling sleeves, — pale and wasted, lifting up their 
voices and pouring out their hearts upon the ' Rest for 
the Weary,' or 'Homeward Bound,' or 'Shining Shore/ 
or ' Glory Hallelujah' ? Once the night prayer meeting 
was kept up till near tattoo, when an officer from one of 
the neighboring camps who was present with a dozen of 



77 

his men, rose, called out in a clear, ringing voice in the 
midst of the services, " Men of the Artillery, For- 
ward — March I" and they clattered out. The officer was 
a devout helper in the meetings, but military rule was 
strongest in those days. 

The extempore speech and prayer sometimes took odd 
turns. I was present at a meeting when a Defender rose 
and said he wished to confess to the brethren some partic- 
ulars of a sinful life. There was once, in such a town, a 
godless youth — said he, and went on to paint his career ; 
how at the age of twelve he smoked cigars and threw the 
Bible at his grandmother ; at fourteen he played tenpins 
and went sailing on Sunday ; at sixteen he ran away from 
home, etc., etc., and when we expected the usual conclu- 
sion, ' and I who address you to night, my friends, am that 
forsaken lad,' surprised us by clapping his hand on the 
shoulder of an innocent, blushing youth in front of him, 
one of the steadiest boys in camp, and shouting his 
climax, " Which his name is Asy Allen and here he sets !" 



HOLIDAYS 



We kept all the holidays at the Hospital ; feasts and 
fasts. The fasts were observed, not literally but with 
chapel services. The feasts we were more exact about ; 
fire-balls on Fourth of July, roast-beef, pudding and 
holly-boughs at Christmas ; but Thanksgiving was per- 
haps the best of all. There was the sermon on the 
blessings of the time ; there was always enough to be 
thankful about, in the darkest days ; and Rally round 
the Flag, Boys, and My country 'tis of thee, and then 
the turkeys with their lovely gizzards chopped up in hot 
gravy, the mashed potatoes and onions stewed in milk, 
the cranberry sauce, the pickles, the fruit-pies and pud- 
dings and iced-cakes trimmed with pink lightning, and 
the oyster-supper in the evening, crowning all. It was 
wonderful how little harm came of these feasts. Almost 
unlimited permission to join in them was given by the 
surgeons and I have reason to suspect that generous 
portions were smuggled in by their comrades to the water- 
gruel patients ; but there seemed to be a charm in the 
home holiday strong enough to divert the pie-crust and 
the stuffing from their natural consequences. 

Poor Sergeant S didn't think he cared about 

any Thanksgiving. What was Thanksgiving to him ? Now 

6 



82 



if he were at home and could have it all quiet and nice 
with his friends, — but the mess-hall and the crowcl and 
the quantities of things and the smell and the noise, — 
and then he didn't believe there would be a single bit of 
celery, or even cranberry sauce. Poor Sergeant S. 
had come to the field full of the right zeal and spirit at 
first, giving up a salary of a thousand dollars for thirteen 
dollars a month " and the country," but he was utterly 
broken down with over-marching, exposure and long 
sickness. Wouldn't he like to have his dinner brought 
in to him? 'No. He didn't want any dinner. What 
had lie to do with Thanksgiving?' In the great wings 
of the central building were many little rooms set apart 
for patients. To very ill, or nervous and sensitive 
men their quiet and cheeriness were a great blessing. 
Each room had one or two white beds for patients and 
one for an attendant, each its little open fire-place and 
crackling wood-fire and high, wide window letting in 
the sweet sunshine and the sight of the sailing clouds, 
the pleasant fields, the far-oif, gleaming river. Sergeant 
S. had one of these rooms. At dinner time he was 
enticed for a moment into one next door and when he 
came back, his little table was set out for dinner with a 
white cloth, a fresh damask napkin folded over the block 
of bread, a change of hot china plates, the Superin- 
tendent's silver fork and spoon, a covered dish with the 



83 

turkey, another with vegetables, a little bowl of cran- 
berry sauce and a crisp spray of celery in a tail flower- 
glass. The poor Sergeant melted and came to again, 
forgot his vapors and ate every crumb of his little feast. 
I think he got better from that day. 

Sometimes, when the Hospital was thin, we took a 
holiday hour ourselves, and walked out into the sweet 
brown waste beyond the camp to see how the seasons 
got on. 

All seasons were delightful here, even the hot midsum- 
mer ' when the hay was down ;' when walking was im- 
possible before dusk and impracticable after it ; when the 
town and the river lay invisible in pure heat ; even then, 
though the store-room thermometer rarely got below 86° 
and stood from 96° to 101° for days together, — little 
breezes were always blowing about the papers on the table, 
and on the tower top in the rare evenings when we found 
time to go up, it was another country. From the tower 
top we watched the swallows in broad flights, wheel and 
scatter and close again and drop by twos and threes and 
handsfull into the wide chimneys. There was one swallow, 
a gay young bachelor swallow, who came home with the 
family, but when all was quiet popped his head out of the 
chimney again, looked about him, hopped up on the top 
ledge, fluttered a little and was off like an arrow. We 
caught him at it two or three times. ' He had only come 



84 

back for his latch-key ; he meant to make a night of it ;' 
said the Surgeon in Charge. 

First after our Hospital life began, came the long and 
late Indian summer when the river was a line of smoky 
blue and the dome hung a great white bubble in a purple 
sky. Then came the light pure snow-falls of January and 
the wonderful February ice-storms turning everything to 
glass and diamond, as if a fairy godmother had touched 
the whole world with her wand ; and then more beau- 
tiful, if possible, the unlocking of the spell ; — all about the 
place such a rattling and clashing, sliding off the roofs, 
loosening from spouts and rails and cornices, klinketing 
against the window-ledges, showering in rains of jewels 
with every light wind in the trees ; — all the fairy frost- 
work going to pieces ; and through the clinging white 
mist of the soft morning, a sudden splendor of clear 
sunshine flashing over all. Then came wild March days 
with flying clouds and ink-black streaks and spots of 
shadow on the river and the distant shores ; the white 
line of the City coming out with startling distinctness in 
every momentary gleam. 

The March days were sometimes wild indeed. One 
fearful wind-storm overtook us. Looking out of the 
store-room window in the morning I saw the first sign of 
its coming in a sudden swirl of light leaves into the air. 
Then a huge white cloud came all at once across the 



85 



levels from the City, with the scream of a fiend behind it. 
The dome was just visible, a lead-colored ball through 
the white dust-storm. Then all the red-brown leaves 
from all the bushes in the fields were in the sky at once, 
pouring in over the open top of the window, even driving- 
down the chimney. Then John put his head in at the 
door, with the grin of one who announces a calamity and 
said, " Ward A. and Ward B. has went and Ward Gr. is a 
going." I ran to the window, and in an instant, with a 
powdery crash, over went Ward Gr. all its length on its 
side. A crowd of men carrying others came out at its 
upper end, then a puff of smoke from the roof. The 
stoves were upset. For a moment I was very anxious, 
expecting to see the whole tar-roofed range one sheet of 
wind and flame. There was a rush of the 'Fire Brigade' 
for the buckets standing, always filled, with the axes and 
ladders on the first landing of the central building. I 
tried to get out at the front door. The wind stood up 
against me like an iron wall. There was nothing to do 
but to collect and fill the store-room cans and buckets 
and set them out ready. Happily a great burst of rain 
came with the next stroke of the gale, and the fire was 
soon got under. All the patients were taken out 
unharmed, except by the shock and a scratch or two, and 
transferred to other wards. The barracks were so utterly 
wrecked that repairs were impossible, and in their places, 



86 

by and by, rose beautiful, airy, fresh tent-wards in which 
it was almost a pleasure to be ill. 

By middle-March the trees in the grove began to look 
alive. A sort of green mist softened the distance. From 
the store-room window Spring could be plainly seen ; the 
sweet, early, half-southern Spring, with its inexpressible 
charm. Getting shrubs and trees in mass and fields 
aslant in wide spaces gives the tender greens and yellows 
a chance to show. The air is full of vague, earthy 
sweetness. One little bird begins to sing in a leafless 
tree near the store-room window, and sings all day the 
same little song ; sings persistently, never heeding 
spiteful dashes of wind and rain ; sings 



* 



pii 



* 



- ft v \ -~- 



dacapo and dacapo. 

Patches of snow lie by the road- side and in the fields ; 
a fair, stiff crust, — like the rebellion we say, looking hard 
and defiant till you set your foot on it. Crocusses push 
up among the weeds in the old garden-place, and we 
think it must be time to go out and look for trailing 
arbutus. Over the sweet brown waste, beyond the 
earthworks, half way down the first ravine we find it. 
Light mats of snow lie over it ; snow-mats shrunken 
away at the edges, pierced by a hundred grass-blades- 



87 

Under the red-oak shrubs, under the dry, rustling leaves, 
under the yellow fern we find it, bed after bed of it ; just 
not in blossom ; buds all streaked with white and pink. 
A week afterwards, after a day or two of soft rains, we go 
again, — and all the slopes of the ravine are fairy-land 
with thousands of downy pink and white blossoms, all 
fragrant with the blessed odors of the woods. We take 
them up in handsfull and baskets full, and by the strong 
fibres in the moss-beds as they grow, and the store-room 
and wards are filled with their sweetness for days. 

A little later other spring flowers came ; liverwort, star- 
flowers, anemones, low blossoming shrubs and millions of 
violets. Everywhere the ground was only one great 
tufted mat, yellow, white and blue ; along the roadside, 
creeping up to the very edges of the earth-works ; fol- 
lowing in fairy-rings round the circles where the old 
Sibley tents stood last year ; broad-sown in the wide, 
empty fields — millions on millions of wild flowers. They 
were a constant delight to us all. The men dug them up 
and planted them in short-lived gardens by the barracks, 
the children brought them in tin-cups full and aprons 
full, and every ward was gay with garlands and bunches 
of them. 

This freedom of the fields now and then, with the 
•glimpses of the lovely changing seasons was a wonderful 
relaxation and refreshment after the anxiety and sadness 



of the wards and the endless routine of the store-room. 
These were our sweet and priceless holidays. 

One evening near the May of 1864 the Surgeon in 
Charge came to the door and asked if we would like to 
see the camp-fires of an army. There were at least ' a 
thousand fires,' he said, ' between Xanthus and the ships, 
and fifty warriors to each, and the horses were no doubt 
munching their heaps of barley and wishing for the morn- 
ing.' From the tower top we saw the camps lying, 
twinkling, a field of fire-flies toward the North ; big fights, 
little lights and a sort of luminous mist where the lights 
all ran together. The next morning we went through 
the camps, and the hundreds of shelter-tents, rows of 
glittering brass gnns, pickets of horses, red blankets, blue 
uniforms, — half a dozen black regiments drilling, among 
them ; — all grouped and scattered over the green fields 
by the river made a gay and charming picture. 

Again, the next morning, seeing a line of dust moving 
towards us through the grove, we knew it was a march- 
ing column and must be Burnside's men, so we went to 
the bottom of the field and waited on the grass to see 
them go by. They looked so well, so cheery. It was a 
delight, accustomed as we were to the gaunt faces in 
the wards, to see so many healthy-looking men. They 
marched at ease, laughing, singing, calling out now and 
then, "Goodbye, ladies! Goodbye !" One tall fellow 



89 

dipped his tin cup in a little spring by the road-side and 
drank our healths in passing, " Ave Cossar ;" said the 
Surgeon in Charge ; " Morituri te salutant." The sod 
was thick with violets, and bunches of them were stuck in 
many caps and coats. A soldier took the cluster from 
his cap-band and gave it to me. Gr. unfastened a little 
gilded horse-shoe from her chain and tied it, by the blue 
ribbon, in his coat. He lifted his cap ; " This will keep 
me safe in the next battle ; I did not expect such good 
luck in Virginia." One company was singing in parts ; 

" Rally round the Flag boys, 
Rally once again /" 

A new Hampshire regiment, a New York and a Pennsyl- 
vania regiment looked very finely ; toughened through 
and through, red-brown faces, dusty, blonde hair and 
white teeth ; looked as if no camp-sickuess could get hold 
of them. ' Didn't know where they were going ; only 
were going after Jeff and meant to give it to him when 
they got him.' So they passed, marching and singing, 
the bayonets disappearing at last southward in the Spring 
sunshine, in the dust of the Leesburg pike. 

In the wake of the column crept a shabby, stealthy 
country wagon with a dirty, canvas cover, conducted by 
two dun-colored natives of the class called ' loyal residents 
of the neighborhood.' Armed with his rank and his sus- 
picions the Surgeon in Charge ordered a halt and found 



90 



the wagon packed full of blue overcoats thrown away on 
the warm, dusty inarch. He took possession of course, 
and turned the property over to the nearest quarter- 
master. 

One day when the Great War was drawing to a close, 
we heard that the troop-ship Atlantic was at the wharf 
below, taking on a part of Schofield's Army Corps to re- 
inforce General Sherman, and drove down to the town to 
see the embarkation. The ship was not quite ready and 
the wharf and the near streets were blue with uniforms. 
One Indiana and two Illinois regiments were to go on 
board. We went up into the great ship for a moment 
and looked down on the wharf. It was heaped with 
boxes, bales, barrels, knapsacks, little leather trunks, 
camp-chairs and all the indiscriminate ' plunder 7 of the 
regiments. Muskets were stacked all up and down the 
streets running from the wharf, and the men were ' house- 
keeping' on the curb-stones. Commissaries were breaking 
open barrels and boxes and giving out rations ; fifty little 
camp-fires made of the staves and boards were smoking 
away and fifty coffee pots and tin cups simmering over 
them. An officer with a charming face and manner came 
up and spoke to the Surgeon in Charge. " Rough work 
this and hard fare," — pointing to the biscuit the men were 
carrying off in their blankets, — " but I've seen more than 
one day when we were after Hood when I would have 



91 

given five dollars for one of those hard tacks, aye and for 
half a one." The men he said, were in the finest spirits 
with the prospect of going to Sherman. They were a 
noble-looking set. ' Where are you going V we asked one 
and another. " Ah ! to Sherman ! He's the soldier !" 
' May I warm my hands at your fire V I asked one group. 
It was early February and very cold. " That you may,' 
said two or three at once, jumping up, though they had 
nothing better than the curb-stone to offer me as a seat— 
"That you may; only" — looking at me, "you musn't 
mind having the smoke in your eyes." But I don't think 
it was the smoke. They told me they left Thomas on the 
15th of January at Clifton and expected to enjoy the 
voyage and seeing ' new countries' very much. 

We had just heard of Mr. Lincoln's journey to Fort 
Monroe to meet the rebel commissioners, but the result 
was not yet known. " If it's a patched-up peace the 
soldiers won't see it," said one of the group about the fire, 
and another, — " I guess old Abe will come out about 
right. He generally suits me whatever he does." 

1 Do you lose your men' we asked our unknown officer, 
'when they scatter in a town like this?' "Oh no," he 
said; "in all our marches I have only lost, once four, 
once six men, and they joined us at the next halt. Our 
regiment never lost a man in that way." 



IN THE STORE-ROOM 



The store-room fire crackles and sparkles, catching at 
the little crisp scrolls of bark on the edges of the birch 
logs and sending light, flashing flames up the chimney. 
The store-room window is open ; it is almost always open 
all the year round. They are raising the flag. It stops 
at the half-mast this morning and a voice under the window 
says: — " Robinson got his discharge last night." Other 
distant flags here and there, little bits of light and color, 
toss in the soft wind. A long drawn strain of far-off 
band-music comes in, cut sharply across by the kling! 
kling! of the office orderly-bell. This frequent stroke of 
the office bell gives a wonderful sense of comfort and secu- 
rity. The Chief Officer is at his post ; when is he not at 
his post? and all the machinery is in swift and even 
motion. 

A grievance or two are lying in wait for me at the door. 
Sullivan holds a can of butter in silent protest under my 
nose, and seeing plainly my acquiescence in his own views, 
says : — " I wouldn't cheat the slush fund of that there 
butter, ma'am, no how." It is Steward Blank's last 
'bargain.' By and bye I hold a little conversation with 
Steward Blank on the subject of butter, but he soon 
diverts it to the religious interests of the Hospital and 



96 

what ' we officers' owe the men in the way of example. 
But the caduceus even when worn across the shoulder, as 
Steward Blank wears it, to give an air of rank, inspires 
me with very little respect. 

I know a Steward fair to see, 

Trust him not ! 

"No boiled eggs in Ward D. for breakfast." Investi- 
gation shows that the eggs of Ward D, — a rare accident, 
were set on the wrong tray and quietly partaken of by the 
ward next above without any attempt to right the blun- 
der. Sullivan anxiously offers to avenge on E, D's injury, 
but it is not too late to send a fresh supply, and it is per- 
haps asking too much of the Defenders that when fortune 
places unexpected eggs before them, they should reject 
the gift. 

Ben, the cheerful and profane butcher, — why are we 
called on to tolerate so much ' language' in the butcher ? 
comes to assure me that something is the matter with the 
4 specific levity' of the mutton and poultry, ' for things 
weighs entirely different here and in town,' and remind- 
ing me that there is a ' special' for broiled chicken for 
one, wants to know ' if he shall kill half a chicken.' 

Little Wood, carpenter, undertaker, and unreserved 
veteran, is putting a new lock on the store-room door. 
'It is well known ma'am/ say certain of my ward friends, 
1 that more than one key in this institution unlocks your 



97 

door.' Wood is weazened and elderly, small and sharp, 
with a keen lookout for objects connected with his profes- 
sion, and eager to entertain us with professional anec- 
dotes. It is a great trial to him to see so much punch- 
making going on in the store-room "and he not in it." 
" A good many pretty bad off in the 'ospital," he says : — 
"There'll be one in Ward L. to-night, and one in K. 
or me name's not Wood;" — begins to wheeze — "I'm 
pretty bad meself!" — appeal to my sympathy ; — "thought I 
should have to give up me job altogether ;" — appeal to my 
interest. — "I'm sorry you don't feel well ;" wheezes rise 
into groans accompanied by appealing glances at the rows 
of punch bottles waiting for Ward D. It is enough to 
melt a heart of stone. I don't give in. I know it will be 
the costly first step ; that Wood will be taken ill on the 
premises every day thereafter ; I urge peppermint tea 
upon him and settle our relations on the whiskey question 
forever. 

The Surgeon in Charge is making rounds this morning. 
The kling-kling! ceases for awhile and Templeton, best of 
men-nurses, arrives and says, breathless with haste and 
importance : — " Some of the good brandy please'm and a 
lot of soft handkerchiefs — Surgeon in Charge — operation 
in G." 

The Surgeon in Charge made a midnight round last 
night, the nurses say, to see that all was well. 



98 



We are proud when special orders signed by him come 
in, and fill them with the very best in store. He often 
sends us a word or two from his notes, to help us, 
he says, to cook with intelligence. 

Number 822 had swallowed nothing for a week. It 
was good to get such a bulletin as this : — " Finding 822 
pulseless, a sharp knife down his throat reached and 
evacuated the abscess. He is taking nourishment. 

Have just trephined N. and W. As soon as I raised 
the bone both shewed consciousness and spoke. Make 
some weak, sloppy gruel for them. 

Am going to M. to tie the gluteal artery and to 
remove a ball behind the eye. Have a quart of wine- 
whey and a quart of egg-nog ready. 

Saw H. Made an opening in the thigh and intro- 
duced a drainage tube. He will do well. Eggs and 
brandy, as much as he will take. 

D. P.'s hand can be saved. Shall see that it is done. 
' The man with the head ' in G. is doing finely. 

L. is a humbug. I will restore him to the bosom of 
his family. 

Number 403. Shot through the neck. Send only 
the thinnest liquids, wine-whey, liquor of oysters, etc., 
till further notice. 

Send Keith one raw egg beaten in a tablespoonful of 
brandy every hour. 



99 



Send James C. twenty-four ounces of port-wine for 
twenty-four hoars. Also, boiled milk and one soft or 
raw egg every two hours. 

Send Weitinan a quart of milk-punch madi with 
brandy, and some crackers and dried beef in place of his 
rations ; he goes home discharged. Send him also a 
pair of large leather slippers. 

Went to Ward G. to amputate C.'s right arm. 

Explained why I think it necessary to the poor fellow 
who acquiesced quietly but sadly. After he was ether- 
ized, put my finger into the wound, saw a chance and 
excised the elbow. He will do well. Eggs and brandy." 

The Surgeon in Charge believed in Food as a curative 
agent. He ordered it in large quantities for men who 
had suffered severe operations ; and our experience 
certainly justified his theories, for these men got well, 
went home, had the small-pox, married their sweethearts, 
set up shops and wrote back for all our photographs to 
hang up in them. Vandenhoff, Sawyer, Tyler, McClain, 
Ripley, Brown, Gregg ; a host of names suggest them- 
selves. All these took large quantities of beef-essence, 
and brandy-and-eggs to the extent of one half-pint 
tumbler full every two hours. 

Sergeant G. exsection of shoulder, Dec. 25th, 1863, 
took oyster soup, chicken soup, eggs at every meal 
prepared in different ways, besides forty-eight c inces of 



100 

egg-nog and two to three bottles of porter every day for 
several weeks. He then came under the ordinary Special 
Diet table and took roast beef, vegetables and pudding 
with one or two pints of milk-punch every day. Early 
in March he was able to travel and was discharged and 
went to Philadelphia, where he was promised a good 
place as watchman. The Sergeant enjoyed all his meals 
and showed no failure and certainly no delicacy of 
appetite, as he had an immense craving for an article, 
furnished he declared, in perfection only by the Philadel- 
phia markets, the intestines of a hog compounded with 
spices. To gratify him inquiries were made, but this 
savory dish could not be obtained. 

Lafayette R . Tenth Vermont Vols., exsection 

of elbow, was able to eat almost immediately after the 
operation, and consumed an extraordinary amount of 
food. He began with beef-tea and egg-nog, taking, 
in the first twenty-four hours after the operation, twenty- 
four eggs beaten in twenty-four ounces of brandy with 
the usual proportion of milk, and a table spoon fid Of the 
strongest essence of beef every two hours. This was 
prepared by semi-broiling the beef, cutting it into dice 
and expressing the juice with lemon-squeezers. I gave 
him in this way, in one day, the juice of thirteen pounds 
of lean beef besides his other food. In three days he 
began to take porter, decreasing the quantity of brandy 



101 

and eggs and increasing the porter till he took seven 
pint-bottles a day, besides three meals of the ordinary 
Special Diet, such as beefsteak, large quantities of 
potatoes mashed with milk and butter, stewed oysters, 
scrambled eggs, chicken, custard, etc. He lay in his bed 
and fed, serenely, ' without haste, without rest.' His 
capacity astonished all beholders. When able to travel 
he was transferred to Vermont. A letter from him four 
months afterwards, says, — "' My arm gains strength 
rapidly, and I think it will be nearly as good as the 
other. I am in charge of the Dispensary and my 
general health is perfectly good." 

McC. exsection of the shoulder, began to take oyster 
broth and milk-punch soon after the operation, and 
consumed regularly, large quantities of food. He took 
steak, baked potatoes and milk toast for breakfast ; roast 
beef, vegetables and custard for dinner ; a bowl of oysters 
between meals, and egg-nog. ale or porter every two 
or three hours. He improved rapidly, was contented and 
merry and said he wanted nothing but a copy of ' Ras- 

selas to see if the Happy Valley was anything like 

Hospital.' His recovery was a little hindered by the 
arrival of an elderly relative with a large box of dough- 
nuts, sausage and pound-cake with the ' heavy streak,' 
in which the patient privately indulged as long as they 
lasted. He travelled comfortably to Michigan in seven 



102 



weeks after the operation, and soon after his arrival was 
taken ill with small-pox which was prevalent in his 
town, but afterwards wrote expressing his gratitude to 
the Surgeon in Charge and saying he ' had no pain, that 
the arm gained strength very fast, and that he could use 
it and the hand quite well. 7 

Walker, the Store-room Orderly, was a valuable assist- 
ant and faithful friend. He ran about untiring, all day, 
carrying puddings and pickles and shirts and sherry- 
bitters to the men. If he saw any one he fancied very ill 
or overlooked, he was sure to bring the story with kind 
eyes full of sympathy. They all knew Walker's shining face 
— he was a fresh young fellow — and often sent their little 
messages by him. " There's a man in M. says he's awful 
empty and wishes he could have something to fill him up. 
Couldn't I take him a corn-starch pudding ?" — " I wish 
Henry in Ward K. could have a woolen shirt. He 
won't ask for it, and those two men-nurses are so slow 
they're as good as dead." His kind heartedness over-ran 
the bounds of camp. "There's a man out there in the 
fields," — a loyal Virginian so called, — "sick in a hovel 
with nothing to eat." So we get a chicken from the 
mess and let him have the pleasure of taking it out and 
showing the wretched family how to make it into broth, 
a process of which they seem to have no idea, and he 
trudges away with it merrily a mile or two in the mud. 



103 

The business of looking over the special returns and 
written requests to classify them for filling, reveals abysses 
of evil spelling. " Lemons and sugar for 3 patience." 
— "Number 35 has one egg each meel." — " Beaf-tea and 
a bole of gruel." — " Rags for poletasses." — " Milk porage 
for two." — I find with concern that evil spelling hardly 
seems to me the atrocity it seemed two years ago. 
Colonel W. of the Judge Advocate General's Department 
declares to me, — "What we really need, as a people, is 
punctuation ; if we could only mind our stops all might 
yet be well." I am astonished to find, in a land of 
spelling books and omniverous readers, such defiance of 
the laws of orthography. 

I am astonished too, to find so much helplessness in 
the use of the ordinary means of communicating ideas. 
A sheet of white paper, ghost-like, seemed to frighten 
and confuse, and hindered instead of facilitating business. 
From the letters received from enquiring friends, down 
to the smallest blank employed in hospital, where every 
device was used to get at just the information needed, 
all seemed sometimes a hopeless 'muddle.' The Chief 
Officer soothed his irritation by the printing of a large 
placard behind which he took refuge, refusing to notice 
"mutilated scraps," but for the Superintendent there 
was no such relief. 

Assistant cook John comes in and presents four 



104 

' specials ' for dinner today and wants to know ' what- 
ever shall he do for chicken and steak and mutton and 
custard to be ready at twelve and it's now half past 
twelve and they're always a doin' it a sending in fresh 
orders after dinner when the surgeon don't get round 
early and all the things drawed this morning and I to 
leave the pots a bilin' and come up to you.' — I give him 
instructions, and requisitions on the commissary steward 
which calm his troubled soul. 

After dinner hosts of visitors from the wards pour in, 
pale, limping and frowzy, mud stained and ragged. They 
are late arrivals and many arm-slings are in demand. — 
"I was a tailor ; no more work for me now." — says C. with 
two thirds of his right hand shot away. People grumble 
because there's ' no more play for me now ;' how deso- 
late the life must be in which is left neither work nor 
play. Here are scarves which must eke out the slings. 
On one is a writing : " Twice around the neck and once 
across the chest of the Union soldier, and the Young 
Ladies' Society of South Socrates, Maine, will be much 
pleased with a line from the recipient." I unroll several 
slings with the S. C. mark, made of an old-fashioned 
yellow-ilowered fabric like faded bed-curtains. Pinned 
on the parcel is a slip of paper on which is written in a 
tremulous hand, — " This material was so strong I thought 
the color would be no matter. It was all I had. I am 



105 

old and poor and cannot do much." The unknown 
maker may be sure that more than one man read her 
words with tears in his brave eyes. 

At last the arm-slings are all gone but two. One is a 
white silk scarf, a funeral scarf worn long ago at Doctor 
Kane's funeral. I fasten it over a tall man's shoulder 
and tell him what it is. He is delighted, for he has 
read the story of the strange North regions which are 
neither land nor sea and 'Kane was always a hero of his.' 
Now there is only one left and the last soldier, the blonde 
big sharpshooter from Michigan, positively refuses to 
take it. — "Somebody will certainly come along this after- 
noon who wants it more than I do." — I offered a pair 
of loose slippers in the ward today to a man taking his 
first steps out of doors. — " Give 'em to that fellow over 
there." he insisted, — " he needs 'em a heap more than 
I." A tall skeleton comes in to see if he can get an 
orange for a sick man who cannot come for it. "But 
don't you want anything for yourself?" — "Oh no, I'm 
ever so much better off than he is ; I'd rather take 
something for him," ' Thy necessity is greater than 
mine.' 

Two men in tattered clothes hobble in. The clatter 
of their crutches goes to one's heart. Am I ' the 
Sanitary ?' they ask. so I produce my reddest flannels, 
and they prove a flaming torch through all the camp. 



106 



Twenty more come at once for red flannel shirts ; blue 
will not answer ; red is the color that suits their con- 
stitutions. I fall an easy prey. 1 give them out as 
far as they go, to the lamest and most ragged. Better 
that ten unrighteous should have two shirts apiece than 
the one model of the virtues go shivering. 

A Zouave looking seven feet high wants many things. 
1 give him socks ; I give him handkerchiefs ; I give 
him letter paper ; I give him tobacco ; I give him every- 
thing he asks for ; he is so big. They tell me about 
their journey into Fredericksburg ; a march of horrors. 
It is always the same story ; marching and halting and 
marching, over frightful roads with endless delays ; the 
'lighter cases,' shattered arms, etc., having to walk; 
nothing to eat or drink ; no care, no shelter ; — " And 
there were fellows left in the swamp who couldn't move," 
one says : — " I don't believe they were ever found." 

Patient from Ward D. calls to say he would like the 
ladies to join the Hospital Temperance Union : meeting 
for organization to-night: speeches and resolutions: hopes 
all will be present : feels as if he had been raised up 
as an instrument. 

Ward surgeon calls to say that several ladies of his 
acquaintance are coming down to visit the forts and 
camps, could we supply them with bedding? Explain 
to the kind hearted old Doctor whom I should be very 



107 

glad to oblige, that the only pillows, etc., under our 
control are sent for the exclusive use of the sick in 
hospital. 

Another patient from the wards comes with a plea 
for tobacco. We hope he will not get small-pox which 
has appeared in his ward. — "Oh no!" — he says, — "My 
family physician, old Doctor Stiles told me I'd never 
ketch anything, I chewed too much tobacco for that." 
"But" — sententiously — "that was encouraging a bad 
habit." "Well" — jocosely — glancing at the big box 
just opened, — " It is a bad habit, but I'm too old to 
leave it off, and anyhow I shan't ketch the small-pox 
for it only goes about in cold weather ; my family phy- 
sician old Dr. Stiles says so." 

A nurse calls to say that the men will steal the towels. 
Show her that towels are a sacred trust of the Govern- 
ment, and if any towels are to be stolen she must direct 
the men to steal ours and not hospital property. 

Poor Mason sends a message for pie. He wants pie 
on the brink of eternity. He seems turning all animal 
just before he turns all spirit. The surgeon says nothing 
will make any difference so I send Mm an apple turn- 
over. Among the New Englanders especially, there 
appeared to be a strange affection for "pie." The sick 
clamored for it and the assistant medical officers pre- 
scribed it. It appeared to them a light and pleasant 



108 

article of diet, much to the disgust of the Surgeon in 
Charge who issued more than one edict against it. 

Three Defenders call to say that they have seen some 
needles and thread that 'Jones got here,' and would 
like to have some too. Three more Defenders who had 
seen the gentlemen who had seen the needles and thread 
that 'Jones got here,' would like more of the same sort, 
and the chairman of the delegation performs a bow 
and says, — ' you're welcome ma'am,' meaning ' thank 
you.' 

A jolly Blue-boy announces himself as the ' near 
wheel horse of the Diet car ' and wants some dominoes 
and promises not to play on the top of the car on the 
out journeys. He says — "Mr. French, 'the off horse,' 
is on a pass to the City to hear the debates." 

The Surgeon in Charge gave passes in large num- 
bers to the men to hear the speeches and see the public 
buildings. He said many soldiers were from Western 
towns and might never have another chance. I do not 
remember any case in which this kindness was abused. 
These visits were well talked over and public questions 
well fought over in the wards. The Emancipation Proc- 
lamation, and the Message of December 1863, with its 
plan of amnesty and reconstruction, ending with the 
words : — " We do honorably recognize the gallant men 
from commander to sentinel to whom more than to 



109 



others the world must stand indebted for the home of 
Freedom disenthralled," etc., etc., were folded down in 
the Morning Chronicle and handed approvingly from bed 
to bed. The Soldiers' Voting Bill, the Bounty, back Pay 
and Appropriation Bills, the Peace plans and the Consti- 
tutional Amendment to abolish slavery, were thor- 
oughly and intelligently discussed. Some of our men 
were present at all the great speeches of those days and 
many of them joined in the hurrahs and the ' Glory Hal- 
lelujahs' of the 31st of January 1865, when the Amend- 
ment was carried in the House. 

At the re-inauguration every man who was well 
enough went over, the Surgeon in Charge, then and 
always, ordering that the enlisted men should have the 
first claim in the ambulances. 

Looking out of the window in a break in the stream of 
visits, I see a poor, shabby, country wagon stopping at 
the main entrance and a pale woman putting her head 
out, covering and uncovering her face, searching the^ 
windows of the Hospital, looking for something she is 
afraid to see. Going down quickly in fear lest it should 
be Mrs. Robinson whose husband died last night, I meet 
the man helping the woman gently in. " Mrs. Bendon, 
ma'am, my wife ;" and she, — " Is my son alive?" — "Oh 
yes ! alive and better." 

The Surgeon in Charge, who has been interested in this 



110 

case, beckons me from the office and says he will go with 
me and see Robert. He stands by him and speaks to 
him about a furlough and going home, or having his 
friends come to see him; how would he like that? — " Oh 
I know !" whispers Robert with the color all up in his 
forehead ; "They've come ; — they're here now ; I knew it 
the moment you came in." So the father and mother sit 
by him, one on each side, happy to find him alive, happy 
to find a hospital a comfortable place ; they 'wouldn't 
have believed it ; they have heard such stories !' 

Robert has a sunny little room in the south wing, 
with his rocking-chair and wood-fire and pictures and 
geranium-plant. " The Mother would never have 
believed it," — says the father ; — " I wouldn't have brought 
her, only I was afraid she would go crazy if Robert were 
to die. Two other mothers in our place in Ohio have 
lost their minds when their boys died, away in the army 
and they never saw them." They left the other children 
at home and helped by all the little settlement about 
them, set off on their long journey. " How did you get 
means for it?" — "Oh, the neighbors were very kind when 
they heard about it, and they came in, one after another, 
and brought us little packages of food, and we sold our 
horse ; the neighbors got together and bought it at a good 
price." 

And sitting by Robert's fire they told the simple little 



Ill 

story, one among so many ; the story of the quiet little 
settlement, so quiet, now that the boys were gone to the 
war ; the anxious hearts, the daily toiling for the children 
left, while father's and mother's thoughts were following 
the weary, patient army ; the gloom, when for two 
households in the very small village only the story of a 
soldier's grave was left ; the horror when insanity covered 
the grief of two mothers. All this they told, in their 
simple way, never seeing how pathetic it was, and how 
paltry it made much that the rest of us call sacrifice. 

In a few days Robert was better able to travel, and 
furnished with all the comforts of the Sanitary Commis- 
sion, they set out on their slow journey to the log cabin 
and the carpenter's bench, — to privation sometimes, I am 
afraid, but to the home, where the neighbors were look- 
ing for them and the children had the warmest nook by 
the fire saved for Robert ; home, where he lived tranquil 
and happy till the Spring passed and the Summer brought 
him Heaven. 

Now, four or five discharged men come in to say 
1 Good bye' and get little comforts for the morning 
journey. 

Bates, — left hand amputated. 

Adams, — hip crushed at Chancellorsville. 

Couch, — chronic diarrhoea. 

Clark, — right arm amputated. 



112 



Christian Spann, — an amiable, patient German from 
Michigan, fracture of both jaws and end of tongue taken 
off. 

C. N, — was buried alive in the explosion of the mine 
at Petersburg and has lost hearing, speech and almost all 
sensation. He has a piteous expression of face and 
makes signs, as best he can, of gratitude for even a look 
of sympathy. 

J. C, — ophthalmia; losing the sight of both eyes, having 
several children at home depending on the work that he 
will never do again. 

A, — on crutches, is ' really ashamed to ask for any- 
thing, but has lost his wife since he came out and must 
save and look out for the children ; three of 'em ; oldest 
is thirteen and trying the best she can to keep the little 
place together till he can get home to her.' 

A Connecticut man from Ward I. comes in he says, 
' for a little talk, if I don't mind.' He is a typhoid con- 
valescent and begins the ' little talk' by asking if I have 
ever had a fever. "Yes," — I answer — "I had a fever 
when I was in Rome." He smiles ; something in the 
phrase 'reminds him of Cassius.' — "In Rome?" — he 
says, — "You have been in Italy?" — "Yes." — "And 
have seen the antiquities and the Florence galleries and 
Raphael's frescoes and Michael Angelo's Last Judgment 
and Pompeii and Vesuvius!" — all in a breath — "Oh! 



113 

you have seen all these?" — I admit the fact. — "How 
happy I should be if I thought I should ever see what I 
long so much for." — I suggest the theory that every 
intense, legitimate desire is prophetic of its own fulfil- 
ment, not necessarily here, but in another world if we 
fulfil the conditions of entering it. — "I accept the 
theory" — he rejoins, kindling, — "but what then must we 
think of the future of such men as Chesterfield, for 
instance, who have expended themselves within the limits 
of life and time ?" 

The sun goes down beyond the sweet, brown waste 
with a touch of fire, here and there, on shining objects in 
the far-off town. The outline of the finished figure of 
Liberty — finished at last — grows dark against the redden- 
ing sky. The early evening is so fresh, so still. At dusk 
the men come under, the window and sing, in parts, 
"Beautiful Star" and "Do they think of me at Home," 
and Walker goes down with hands full of tobacco and the 
assurance that they do. I don't think they sing " Glory 
Hallelujah" quite so much now, as "When this cruel War 
is over." 

The store-room fire is a heap of glowing brands, just 
not fallen into glowing coals. The window is always 
open. How the whippoorwills cry ! Bird-ghosts, invis- 
ible, haunting the grove and calling to each other out of 
the heart of it, in clear, shrill notes, sometimes faster and 

8 



114 



faster, as if one were trying to outcry its mate ; 
poor-will! whippoor-will 1 wlvippoorwill ! whippo'will ! 
w'pw'll! then a little silence, then a solitary cry and 
answer, and the airy duel over again. 

Fragments of bugle-music from the distant forts float in 
on little puffs of wind. The Hospital bugle takes up the 
golden call and seems to say, sweet and slow, 

" Hence, away ; — all is well ; 
One — aloof — stand — sentinel." 



IN THE WARDS 



Besides the daily detective rounds, much of the time 
that could be saved from the store-room was spent in the 
wards. Seeing the men constantly, learning their fancies 
and home habits, noticing the changes m their condition 
from day to day gave real assistance in the special business 
of feeding them ; and talking with them, writing for them, 
helping them invent occupations and amusements, hearing 
their "views" on public questions and witnessing always 
their wonderful courage and cheerfulness were never-fail- 
ing sources of refreshment and pleasure. A current of 
men was always flowing in and out of the wards. Some- 
times only a few at a time came and went. Sometimes 
hundreds arrived or were swept off in a day. On the 
thirteenth of June 1863 seven hundred, and on the twen- 
tieth of January 1864 five hundred and sixty sick and 
wounded came in. These were the two largest single 
trains. On a cold midnight of December 1863 two hun- 
dred and fifty badly wounded men from skirmishes in the 
Army of the Potomac crept wearily up. Then four hun- 
dred came in two days and a hundred and eighty more at 
midnight of the second day. Large numbers arrived in 
Midsummer of 1864, many of them •Hundred Days' men' 
broken down at once by camp sickness and more exacting 



118 

and discontented than any other class of patients. In a 
fortnight or little more, of the May of 1865, after the 
' quick march' home' which sounded so finely in the news- 
papers, we took in fourteen hundred and ninety men. 
There was now and then a general clearing out of conva- 
lescents for duty, a large number of transfers or discharges 
at once, or a sweep of ' able' men in some sudden alarm 
for the safety of Washington. Generally speaking how- 
ever, the arrivals and departures were by small squads 
and happened every few days, so that it needed constant 
watchfulness to see that the comers and the goers were 
properly cared for in all respects. 

Our ' alarms' were never very serious, but every pre- 
caution was taken against their possible consequences. 
In September of 1862 after the 'Second Bull Run' a line 
of earthworks was thrown up a little outside the camp 
limits. In March of the next year a line connecting all 
the forts was finished and strengthened. A tidy little 
redoubt lay just on the edge of the grounds. In June a 
detachment of the Signal Corps escorted by a troop of 
horse took possession of the tower as a signal station and 
the dipping of little flags by day and waving of colored 
lanterns by night was picturesque and curious. Fitz- 
Hugh Lee was reported at Annandale close by, with cav- 
alry. In April of 1864 one hundred of our men of the 
Second Battalion, Invalid Corps, were suddenly marched 



119 

away to take the place of ' Augur's reinforcements' from 
the forts about Washington. In July the rebels advanced 
northward ; Washington was ' threatened' again ; every 
convalescent able to march was sent off ; sounds of cannon 
were heard and there were soft alarms among the ladies 
of the ward officers' mess on the subject of what they 
called the "Grillers." . Guerillas were known indeed to be 
just at hand, and one agent, or delegate, or sympathiser, 
in a yellow duster, wandering off beyond the earthworks 
'for a walk,' was popularly supposed to have been cap- 
tured and eaten by them. 

Once in the middle of the night we were wakened sud- 
denly by the ' assembly call' from one of the forts, start- 
lingly clear in the deep silence, followed by a roll of 
drums. There was nothing to hear or see out of the win- 
dow, in the sweet darkness, but the birds twittering softly 
and a sort of expectancy in air and sky. We listened 
long, but nothing came of the expectancy; nothing but 
the wonder of the dawn, and we thought no more of 
guerillas till six o'clock when we learned that the garri- 
son had turned out on some false fright. In days like 
these the wards were thinned ; once we got down to 
ninety-seven patients and reported a large number of 
empty beds. A friend coming then to see us from the 
City and looking up and down the barracks, says the 
empty beds make a keener impression on her than if they 



120 

were full of maimed and suffering men ; they look so 
grim, so ready. 

The Surgeon in Charge always notified us of arrivals, 
discharges, etc. "I send you," he writes on a slip of 
paper for the store-room, " a copy of order just issued by 
me, transfer of a hundred men to northern hospitals. I 
know you will want to be kind to some of these men." 
He told us to call his attention to any man who seemed 
to us a subject for discharge who might by chance have 
been overlooked, and made a conscience-matter of hurry- 
ing through the discharge papers as rapidly as possible. 

" I could not fulfill your request to-day," he sends 
word, " because I had a pile of discharge papers on my 
table and did not feel justified in doing anything but mak- 
ing them out and sending them forward. Think how 
many sad wives and poor little children depend on my 
promptness in this duty. I wish I had two heads and four 
hands." The broken-down men were always eager to be 
discharged and sent home. Once only, a poor fellow 
said when I asked him about getting away ; — " It's but a 
poor home I have to go to ; I'd rather stop here till I 
die." 

The arrival of a large ambulance train was almost 
always announced by a mounted courier in advance, and 
word came at once to store-room and kitchen, so that 
every preparation could be made. Strong soup, beef-tea, 



121 

bread and butter, and milk-punch in vast caldrons were 
always ready, and all hands were notified to be on the 
spot to help lift the patients and distribute the food. 
When the work in kitchen and store-room on such an 
occasion was well over, the wards were visited to see if 
any one had been overlooked. 

There was never a critical case in Hospital on which 
G-.'s intelligence was not brought to bear in some shape. 
On one of these nights a nurse came hurriedly up with 

the word, — " There's a man dying in Ward ; we can't 

do anything for him." — " Has he taken anything since he 
came in ?" — " No'm, can't eat nothin', doctor says musn't 
give him no stimulants, stomach's too weak." " I'll have 
a look at him," says Gr. — and after the nurse goes out — 
"the surgeon doesn't know a bronchitis from a broken 
leg. There's not a man in that ward who ought to die. — 
If he is dying, he is dying of starvation." She hunts up 
the doctor and asks if wine-whey, the lightest of stimu- 
lants, may be tried. Doctor didn't know what it was, but 
had no objection ; ' man couldn't live anyhow.' The man 
took the cup full eagerly, was ' out of danger 7 in the morn- 
ing, got well, — the doctor directing the nurse to be very 
particular to ' give him his wine- whey ' reg'lar,' — went 
back to the field and helped to take Richmond. 

It was delightful to see what changes rest, clean clothes 
and a few good meals often made. Miserable heaps 



122 

brought in on stretchers might be found in a week's time 
sitting up in dressing-gowns with newspapers in their 
laps ; and in a week more with paper collars and poma- 
tum in their hair. These articles I am commissioned to 
buy ; also patent hair dye. I have more than once 
bought patent hair dye for the wards. Gregory had hair 
and barbe WAfrique of the reddest red our eyes endure. 
I never saw anything so red ; it gave out light and heat ; 
or so pink as his eyes and so milk-white as his complex- 
ion. He devoted the first moments of his convalescence 
to applying the preparation which is not a dye but which 
instantaneously turned beard, hair and eye-brows purple- 
black. The effect was horrible — spectral. He got no 
quarter in the wards, however, and returned, by streaks, 
to the more harmonious colors of nature. 

Men sometimes came into Hospital lost in delirium, or 
too deeply exhausted to give the home address, and so 
died. T. D. was brought in far gone in fever and speech- 
less. In his pocket were found a red morocco testament 
and a poor little note-book half soaked through with rain 
or swamp-damp, in which a few wandering pencil notes 
were still legible, and the little couplet — 

'■ Not a sigh shall tell my story, 
Silent death shall be my glory." 

The discolored leaves said here and there : '• Camp, 
bank of James, I am on guard. The sun is very hot. 



123 



Moved camp for the third time and went to digging. 

Another hot day — I am sick. July 14th — We are getting 

our pay to-day ; I say we, but I am not getting any — 

digging wears out so many clothes. 16th — Another hot 

day ; I am sick ; I am hardly able to do anything. We 

are here in the old camp again. Have had no letter for 

three weeks. On the march — sleeping out of doors. Lay 

in the rain all night — sick — don't know where I shall go. 

Marched again — lay out of doors — very wet — no shelter." 

Through a photograph of a dark sad-eyed young girl, with 

the name Mary on the back of it, we communicated 

with his friends and saved for them a lock of light brown 

hair, fine, thick and soft as a little child's. 

The mother wrote from Wisconsin : 

"It was with a sad heart that I read the contents of your 
letter to Mary telling her of the death of my son. I feel very 
thankful to you for your kindness, and oh ! how much more will 
I be, if you will be to the trouble to send me the articles you 
spoke of and the lock of hair you mention in your letter. Please 
answer this at onceJ' 

The soldier-nurses deserve good words. Many of 
them were the most faithful and devoted of men. Clumsy 
and tender, kindly, eager, and heavy-handed, they did 
what they could. Only here and there one was found 
who was capable of drinking up the milk-punch and 
setting the scrambled eggs aside for private banquets, and 
boldly wearing the flannel shirt given him for a patient. 



124 

Old Smith meets me on my morning visit and tells me 
that he thinks the doctor in M. ought to give Williams 
more stimulants ; that he has a discharging wound and 
faints after every dressing. I advise him to go and 
find the doctor and put the case to him. He comes 
back in glee with an order on the store-room for punch 
and porter. Old Smith's patients always do well. He 
had a son in the army who was wounded and died far 
away from home, " and then I couldn't stand it any 
longer, ma'am, and I went in myself, and now whenever 
I get a young fellow like Williams to take care of, it 
seems like as if I was a doing for my own boy and it 
makes me feel better." 

In another ward I encounter Vincent who ' spells it 
with a Wee,' and who addresses me all in a breath ; 

" Well Miss four doctors is after me for their wards 

but I think I'll stick by the old gentleman in the specs or 
Doctor Havens who as fur as I can see is a gentleman too 
I objected to Doctor Davis though I won't say but what 
he's a nice little man enough I hated to give him up 
but them stairs and now when you see anything wrong 
in my ward don't you be afraid to say so though I do 
allow that my ward is the cleanest on the hill." 'Win- 
cent' endorses the Surgeon in Charge. " He's a quick 
man and a kind man," he says; — "He's a wiolent and 
a patient man — He'd get out of his bed and sick him- 



125 

self any time day or night to go and see a sick soldier 
me and him never had no words whatever." 

Here is a ward-master much elated with the import- 
ance of having small-pox break out in his ward, and a 
' difficult ' one with whom I make an appointment to 
thread lint after his instructions, "for I want some much 
better than any kind of lint that ever came into this 
Hospital, ma'am.' 1 

We were often troubled by the changes and transfers 
among the detailed men and the need of teaching new 
sets of cooks and nurses. When three companies of the 
Invalid Corps came down to us, we thought these cares 
were over. Soon after their arrival however, forty were 
discharged as perfectly useless. Then we began to fill 
in with transfers of our own men to the corps. Poor 
fellows ! What with being terribly ' chaffed ' in the wards 
by the sick men who took this base advantage of their 
own weakness, and what with hating the corps and the 
strange officers and the dress parade, and above all 
things the toy sabres they carried, their lives were a 
burden to them. I did not see that changing the name 
to " Veteran Reserves " made matters much better. They 
could not bear to give up the comradeship and tradi- 
tions of their own old regiments. " I came out with the 
Massachusetts 18th and now I'm to go home with a 
pig-sticker, and a pair of white cotton gloves !" If there 



126 



was any disturbance in camp it was always ' ' them 
Inv'lids." If the ward pet cat was killed or the apples 
stolen from the mess hall kitchen it was " one of them 
Inv'lids." If a man hung about the stoves in the ward, 
— "Oh, you're no good, — go and get yourself condemned 
for an Inv'lid." Disparaging doggrel was handed about, 
of which a verse or two from one "poem" may serve as 
a specimen. 

O who are the men in skim-milk blue 

Who grumble and grumble the whole clay through ? 

' Too little to eat and too much to do ?' 

Them Inv'lids. 

Who ' serve the country ' in hunting rats ? 
And stealing the chops from the kitchen vats ? 
And docking the tails of harmless cats ? 

Them Inv'lids. 

Who hob and nob with their own commanders 
And converse like the British troops in Flanders ? 

Them Inv'lids. 

Who nourish swords like the Thane of Cawdor's 
And snap their fingers at General Orders ? 

Them Inv'lids. 

etc., etc. 

The ward medical officers, 'Contract Surgeons,' were 
more or less victims of a system which made them an 
anomalous civil element in a military establishment, with 
but little military restriction and no military incentive in 
the shape of promotion. They had no position, small 
pay, and mere nominal rank. They began in a tern- 



127 

porary expedient — and who shall say what better one 
could have been devised for the emergency? — but the 
emergency went by, and the expedient was stretched into 
a corps of fifteen hundred men to whose hands were com- 
mitted the wards of almost all General Hospitals. They 
served their little term, made their little experiments and 
disappeared. The class was bad • it was under no bonds 
to be anything else ; the exceptions were many and most 
honorable. I have known a ' contract surgeon for three 
months' — six months — refuse to attend a dying man, or 
attempt to ease his mortal agony because the patient was 
' no good anyhow ' and the surgeon ' had company.' I 
have known one operate on the slightly injured member 
and let the shattered one go, and on being ' relieved ' for 
drunkenness, begin in a neighboring hospital a fresh career 
of cutting off your wrong leg ; and one who recom- 
mended a man for field duty with two inches of the bone 
of his right arm gone, and explained by saying he was 
'sure he wouldn't have sent him up if he had only 
known it.' 

But I have also known contract surgeons faithful, 
sagacious, tender-hearted, carrying their professional skill 
and their professional honor into the meanest contraband 
hut at any hour of the day or night, spending day and 
night with their soldier patients, watching them, devising 
every manner of expedient for their relief, humoring 



128 



their fancies, telling them cheerful stories, tending them 
like brothers and sons. 

In the wards were representatives of many nations, 
Germans, Italians, French, Swiss, but the large majority 
were Americans, of New England and the West. There 
were loyalists from West Virginia and Tennessee, one 
or two stray rebel prisoners, a few blacks and three 
Chippewa Indians, sharp-shooters from Michigan. One 
of these wanted a letter written to his mother, Sliaivonega 
Pahwequa, and on being asked to dictate, said, "Oh, say 
whatever you would say to your mother if you were 
sick." Besides all these, there was a strange soldier who 
drifted into the hospital or rather was found there after 
some arrival, whose name, regiment, State and very lan- 
guage were utterly undiscoverable and who remained 
an unsolved mystery, appearing everywhere in camp 
and silently presenting arms to the Surgeon in Charge 
whenever he passed, till that officer began to believe 
himself haunted by the ghost of some man in blue whom 
he had innocently aggrieved. 

The sick were almost always patient and cheerful ; 
only now and then one, utterly broken down, was de- 
spondent and peevish. The wounded men were marvels 
of good and even gay humor. An access of pain once 
over, they were actually jolly. McC. went across with 
the volunteer party in the boats to Fredericksburg an I 



129 

his thigh was shattered in storming the heights. He 
is an apple-cheeked, blushing boy who ' doesn't see as he 
did anything.' Salmon, a noble man full of courage and 
patience, had the carotid artery tied after a gunshot 
wound of the jaw and throat. When asked if there is 
anything he wants, he writes on the slate, — "Only to 
get well and go at 'em again !" 

The brothers Hinton lie side by side, the corporal and 
the sergeant, each with the right arm gone. They are 
very fine fellows, with frank, handsome faces of the Saxon 
sort, resolute for any treatment the Surgeon in Charge 
thinks necessary, light-hearted and merry over their 
games and arithmetic problems and practice of left-hand 
writing. Corporal Hooker with the right arm taken 
off at the shoulder, says, — "I want you to write to my 
mother and tell her she mustn't take on about it. She 
hasn't any right to feel worse than I do and I guess 
I can stand it." The last we heard of the corporal 
he was offering to break his left arm over the head of 
a man at home who spoke disrespectfully of the service. 

S. was a dear boy, patient, cheerful and lovely-tem- 
pered. He was very anxious to get well, and faithfully 
followed all instructions. The nurses heard him softly 
praying in the night, " Dear Saviour, give me strength 
to see the morning." His serene temper was in his 
favor and to the surprise of all he began to improve 



130 

slowly and was able at last to get home. David W. 
died of fever and scorbutic disease, exhausted by long- 
hardship and neglect. He was courtly even in his last 
agony. I fanned him a great deal, as he liked it, but 
he said repeatedly, "Your arm must be tired, pray don't 
tire yourself." — "Do you like it?" I asked ; — "Oh, yes! 
It is delightful, but don't tire your arm for me, I couldn't 
bear that." 

One wounded man was very sullen, poor fellow. He 
had the look of a city ' rough.' He said he had been 
' dragged about so since he was shot, he didn't believe he 
would ever be well.' He ' thought he should like a reg'lar 
novel.' So I took him the " Arkansas Avengers" — sent by 
some good soul for just that use, — a chequer-board and 
a comic almanac, for all which he was very grateful. I 
wondered whether I ought not to try and elevate his tastes, 
but decided it was hardly fair to take the time when I had 
him helpless at my mercy. "Convalescents" were the 
most pitiable class. Illness is itself an occupation. These 
men, able to get about, but too weak and spiritless to 
do anything or care for anything, sickened by the sight 
of food in quantity, fretted to pain by noise and by the 
very light of day, thrust aside by busy nurses, rather 
contemned by surgeons as " lame-backs" and " good for 
nothings," — how did they ever get through the long and 
weary hours ? 



131 

The men were all fond of flowers. Hot-house flowers 
sometimes came down to us, and the lovely white and 
crimson carnations were a delight to a sick sergeant who 
touched and fondled them and had them fastened to the 
frame of the bedstead close by his head and died with one 
clutched in his thin fingers. One spring morning I carried 
a bunch of the first lilacs to a very sick New England 
boy. — "Now I've got something for you," I said, holding 
them behind me, "just like what grows in your front 
door-yard at home : guess!" — "Lalocs!" — he whispered, 
and I laid them on his folded hands ; — " oh, lalocs! How 
did you know that?" The lilacs outlived him. 

All classes of men were pleased with a little kindness, 
grateful for the smallest attention, always thanking us, 
each in his own way, from the long, solemn, lank-haired 
New Englander who, just fitted out with home-made shirt 
and socks, writing materials, moral fiction and 'Jel,' 
expressed the climax of his content in the words : — 
" Wall, I aint got no complaints to make," — to the 
blonde, blue-eyed German who called G. to his bedside 
one morning to tell her his dream of her. " Last night I 
dreamed," he said, "that I was walking by myself in a 
great city and came to a bridge over a deep river. As I 
crossed the bridge it broke and I fell into the water and 
was sinking, when you came and drew me to land. I was 
all dripping and you took me to your own house and 



132 

gave me a whole new suit of clothes all dry and warm. 
Then you said, ' You may go into the garden and take a 
flower; take any flower you like.' So I took a rose ; but 
as I was picking it I died and went to Heaven. You 
called aloud to me : ' don't drop the rose ; take it with 
you and plant it in Heaven for me.' So I went to Heaven 
and planted it and it grew and blossomed. And when the 
blossoms came I sent you down word and you died and 
came to Heaven and found there all ready a rose-tree, 
blooming for you." 

The Frenchmen in the wards were always light-hearted, 
sweet-tempered, and graciously polite. Charmoille, with 
the right arm gone, taught himself an elaborate and beau- 
tiful manner of writing with the left hand, in the hope of 
getting some little clerkship when he should be dis- 
charged. Louis L. with amputation of the thigh, seemed 
to gain strength too slowly, so he was asked one day, — 
" Is there nothing you think of that you would like, — 
that you used to like at home?" — " 0, Madame, I want 
for nothing ; I have everything that one could desire." — 
"But try and think of something that would do you good 
and perhaps we can get it for you." — "Ah! There is 
nothing, Madame, — but — since you say it — two drops of 
red wine, du vin de mon pays, Madame ; — but you could 
not — here in Virginia." With the cheerful consent of the 
surgeon a small ration of Burgundy was sent down every 



133 

day, and with it poor Louis made a little daily fete of his 
dinner and sang a little song about not forgetting to pass 
the red wine and dying for the country all-so-gay. The 
deux gouttes de vin rouge seemed to brighten the whole 
ward. 

Patrick D. was earning twenty dollars a week as an 
engineer when the war broke out. "Sure," he says, "I 
didn't see why I hadn't as good a right to fight for the 
country as the other boys." When his illness took a bad 
turn we sent for his wife and she happily arrived in time, 
bringing a white, wailing baby which was laid in a sol- 
dier's empty bed in sight of the father who gazed on it 
with great content. " Sure you're all very good to me 
here," he says, " but I just put my head under the blanket 
and cry a little now and then about the five at home and 
no one to feed 'em when I am gone." 

K. was a loyal Virginian of the 1st Virginia Volunteers. 
He was taken with fever, swept up with a crowd of 
others to make room for the wounded after a battle and 
shipped for the North where he had a relapse of typhoid 
and was very ill for many weeks. He was a tall, strik- 
ingly handsome fellow of twenty-three or four, with dark 
eyes and hair, regular, fine features, small feet and long, 
taper, beautiful hands. He was very careful of his clothes 
and personal appearance, and clamored for a tooth-brush 
and a ' perfectly fresh' towel. His regiment had been 



134 

badly thinned. — " They are very hard on ns loyal Virgin- 
ians,' 7 he says ; — "They call us traitors. Traitors indeed!" 
flushing and sparkling ; " What are they? We were badly 
off at first ; there were the rebels all among us ; we had 
no arms ; no supplies ; no Governor ; Letcher didn't 
count ; and they tormented us ; but when we got a Gov- 
ernor and equipments they began to sing dumb." He 
scorned the idea of a discharge and went back to the field 
declaring he ' would fight it out while he lived.' 

PRISONERS AND PRISON RINGS. 

We had but one or two rebel prisoners in the wards, 
and very few National soldiers who had been in rebel 
hands. Hospitals nearer the sea-coast received this class 
of men. Now and then a returned prisoner came to us. 
The first thing these men wanted after food, was paper 
and ink to write home. Sometimes the happy letters 
came back from home before the soldier was furloughed. 
One wife wrote to her husband who had not been able to 
communicate with his family for nearly a year ; " We 

were sitting round the stove reading Mr. 's speech 

about how Union prisoners are treated, when a knock 
came at the door and your letter was handed in. First I 
thanked and blessed God, and then I kissed the lines 
wrote by that dear hand I lost so long." 

Hunter, a loyal Tennessean, told me the story of his 



135 

enlisting, and gave me a little ring he had made in prison. 
What hospital nurse has not a bone ring or trinket carved 
by her men in the wards or in prison. Strung on this 
ribbon are specimens of the art in all its stages, from the 
plain box-wood circlet of the early days, through the 
inlaid foil and sealing-wax phase, to the period of deli- 
cately finished ornament in relief ; rings with a rose, a 
little cannon, a dog couchant, two clasped hands, an open 
book. Here are a Greek cross finished in roses, a Latin 
cross inlaid with black and the name of the Hospital; a 
cross pure white ; the dear boy who made this, said to me 
before he died : — " I thought of putting your initials 
on it, but I could not bring myself to put even yours on 
anything of that shape." Here is a scarf pin in the form 
of a shield with the word ' Constancy' relieved on it in a 
garland of flowers. Here is a ring of hard wood made by 
a rebel prisoner. He modestly offered it in return for 
something given him, saying, — "I am a rebel ma'am, but 

if you will take the ring" What could one do but take 

the ring and make the wish that it might be a token of 
better days coming. 

Hunter, the loyal Tennessean, told me the day he first 
sat up in his rocking-chair, how he came to be a soldier. 
His home was in the hill country of East Tennessee. 
"They watched us a long time," he said ; "me and some 
others. They thought we was a going for the Union. 



136 



We had made up our minds what to do. One night we 
went off. We made for where we thought the army 
was." " What army ?" I asked inadvertently. " The 
army," he repeated, reprovingly ; "there aint but one." 
The National army was the only one to him. " The first 
night we spent in the woods. I laid the fire before I 
went. I laid her a good fire. At daylight we got to 
the top of the mountain, where we could look down at 
our homes behind us. They were getting up and lighting 
the fires. I saw my little house. The smoke was com- 
ing out of the chimney. She had to light it herself. I 
sat down on a flat rock and looked down into the valley. 
I wanted to see if the fire burned. — Well ! (with a long 
sigh) — It was my home ; I suppose it was as sacred to me 
as another man's home to him. I turned my back on it, 
me and the others. We travelled nine days and nights in 
the woods, hiding days and travelling nights, and once 
we passed the rebel picket with a cow-bell tied round 
Robert's neck, and got to the army in Kentucky, and 
three days afterwards we went in and took the Gap. We 
were taken prisoners there, my brother and me, and 
went to Knoxville and then to Macon, and there I saw 
my dear brother die in the filth of the prison and I not 
able to help him. After eight months we were taken to 
Columbia and Salisbury, and then to Richmond and after 
a while to Aiken's Landing. I made this ring in Macon 



137 

jail. You see we had almost nothing to work with ; — and 
when we made anything we put on it Union, or Forever, 
or two clasped hands to mean True till Death, or something 
like that. I wish you'd take the ring." 

Let those who have one of these rings with two 
clasped hands to mean True till Death, keep it as a 
sacred relic. It is the prison sign. The fashion seemed 
to travel underground. Everywhere the prison sign pre- 
vailed. I have had it from Texas, Atlanta, Columbia, 
Belle-Isle, Anderson ville. It is as characteristic as the 
palm branch of the Catacombs. 

With Hunter came Sergeant F of Michigan. He 

had been sick in the prison in Georgia for nearly a year 
and had no care and no medicine except when he could 
sell a little of his wretched food and buy some. ' He kept 
up,' he said, ' and kept moving about, for he observed 
that when a man once gave out and lay down he didn't 
get up again.' 

Captain came to us direct from his imprisonment. 

He was a young officer of refined education and habits 
and had ' suffered many things ' of the enemy. Such 
little preparation as we could command was made to do 
him honor. A bath, a suit of clothes 'a world too wide ' 
belonging to one of the officers, fresh linen, a delicate 
handkerchief, cologne and toilet apparatus were set out 
in his little room. A modest nosegay was folded in his 



138 

napkin at dinner. At table he scarcely ate or spoke. He 
could not handle knife and fork. He seemed benumbed, 
— body and soul. He clumsily singled out a flower to 
put in his coat. Some one offered a pin to fasten it. He 
tried in vain to pick it up and stretching out his poor 
shrunken and stiffened fingers, pleaded; "Excuse me; 
it is so very small." After awhile he looked about, 
cloudily, and said; "You are like angels. — These — are 
the courts of Heaven." 



MAIL DAYS. 



A large collection of Hospital letters lies under my 
hand. Some of these are from men cured and sent back 
to the field. Some are from men on furlough, or worn- 
out men discharged and sent home. Some are from 
transferred nurses giving their experiences in other 
hospitals. Some, the most touching, are from friends at 
home asking for news of their soldiers, or acknowledging 
tidings of illness or death. But they are all touching 
enough, — in the struggle for expression of persons not 
used to putting their thoughts on paper ; the elaborate 
folding ; the pathetic ill-spelling ; the patriotic device, the 
red and blue edges of the sheet ; sometimes in the perfect 
correctness and delicacy of the little document in all its 
parts. Some are restrained and quiet ; some are full of 
j noble courage and patience ; some are the pouring out of 
helpless love and sorrow. So many beg for further par- 
ticulars ; — " Write more ;" " Tell me everything ;" — 
" What did he say of me ? " — " He must have left some 
word about the children ;" — ■" If I could only know his 
thoughts as he went away from earth." — I take a few of 
them up at random. 

Very early in the war a father writes : 



142 



My Dear Miss 

I am very glad to know by your writing that my son died 
among Christians instead of among rebels. My only fears are 
that he had not the care when he was first taken sick he ought 
to have had. There are many stories that the sick are not well 
cared for in many places. I am sure that had any one known 
how good my son was, they could not have misused him. I should 
like to know what he said about his home, and also how he was 
buried. My son is dead ; — through this rebellion. If I, his 
father, were Abraham Lincoln, I would kill the cursed cause of 
it, slavery, before many suns went down. Write all particulars 
of my son's death and relieve broken hearts. 

E. T. 

And a sister : 
Dear Miss 

Will you be so kind as to give the enclosed letter to my bro- 
ther. I have not heard from him since we parted and it would 
give me both pleasure and courage to know how he is situated. 
I am taking a liberty, but I have heard persons say that you too 
have a brother in the army, and would be more apt than another 
to understand the anxiety of a sister's heart. 

A.M. 

This mother is more anxious for her son's honor than 
for his safety or her own relief: 

New York, June 5. 

Dear Madam, 

I am glad to hear from you that my boy is better. Do you 
think he is likely to be soon strong enough to rejoin his regi- 
ment, or would it be better for him, as he is so young, to return 
home ? I am anxious to know too, what character he bears as a 
soldier. I cannot think he is strong enough for the hardships of 



143 



camp life, but as I have his own honor at heart more than my 
desire to see him again, I hesitate to apply for his discharge. 

Julia M. 

William H. was furloughed, and in a few days, from 
far up in the country, came a little box with eggs packed 
in oats, and butter-pats wrapped in linen and broad, 
green leaves. He had learned to knit in hospital, and 
made two wonderful and beautiful pairs of fine, red 
stockings, for the shaping of which he borrowed one 
of ours, and insisted on giving them to us as a parting 
present. The occupation was good and the idea seemed 
to give him constant amusement ; the turning of the 
tables ; a sick soldier knitting socks for a lady. He 
writes : 

Eespected Friend, 

I write to say that I have sent by express a small box with a 
few eggs for your own private use and a little print of butter for 
yonr own use, and some for the other ladies, I want to send 
you some little notion from home, and thought this was the best 
I could send. I feel a desire to hear from the hospital how you 
all are. Remember me to the Chaplain. I trust the Lord will 
bless his labors. I feel a great desire to see you all, and enjoy a 
day or two at the hospital. I hope your life will be precious in 
God's sight. I have not been so well since I got home, and get 
low-spirited and nervous, but when I review the past and see 
how God's Providence has been around me, I feel to thank Him 
and take courage. 

Your grateful friend, 

William H. 



144 



What a characteristic story is this ; what glimpses of 
a noble soul ! 

March 31, 1864. 



My Deak Miss 

When I first opened your letter I dare not look at the com- 
mencement, but glanced my eye toward the bottom and read, — 
" Your dear husband had good care during his illness." I tried 
to think he was better. I jumped up and clapped my hands, and 
said, ' Oh ! it's news from John.' I sat down and began to read 
again until I read, " At half past eight God took him ;" when I 
fell to the floor. Little did I think when he left his family that 
he never would return to them on earth. At the time he enlisted 
tho recruiting officer promised him a furlough of eight days, but 
after he had been at New London a day or two, he was, with 
others, sent away without coming home. When he wrote to me 
from Philadelphia, he said, — " It is all right ; if it were not, God 
would not permit it to be so." After he made up his mind to 
volunteer he seemed perfectly happy and said his duty in life was 
only just begun. The night after he went I taught Frankie a 
new prayer, — " God take care of my dear papa," — and little Rosa 
has learned it too. I can never see you or thank you for your 
kindness to him. If I could know what his thoughts were as he 
went away from earth ! I sometimes think we loved each other 
too well and he was taken home to draw my heart after him. 

J. B. 

Letters often came into the Superintendent's hands 
after the death of the soldier. 
A young sister says : 

, Indiana, Oct. 9, 1 864. 

Dear Brother, 

We wrote yesterday and the day before, so there is not much 
to write, only that mother wants you to keep up good cheer. 



145 

You will get this on your birthday, and mother says she wishes 
she could get there with it. She says if you feel sad and lonely 
you must look to God for comfort. She feels almost too nervous 
to try and write tonight. 

Minnie : — . 

Another letter, found in the pocket of a dead man, 
is from his wife and says that her landlord has threatened 
to turn her out with her little children into the cold 
and begs her husband to come home and see her and 
the children and get some shelter for them. 

It was frequently a painful task to decide whether 
friends should be summoned ; whether there was need 
of it ; whether there was time. These friends were often 
poor and burdened with the care of children, and the 
journey was often long. 

, New Hampshire, Jan. 2 H i, 1864. 



Deak Miss 

I received yours of the 21st last evening. I thank you very 
much for writing about my husband. Please read him the 
enclosed if he is not able, and will you write me as soon as you 
get this, and ask him if he thinks it best for me to come. Tell 
me just what he says. Tell me just what is thought about him. 
I want to know the worst. I ask you again to write as soon as 
you get this. If he expresses the least wish I will start immedi- 
ately. I shall be so disappointed if I do not hear again this 
week. I am so anxious about him. 

A. G. 



146 
Furloughed : 

, January 26, 1863. 

In compliance to your request, I write to say that I got home 
on the 17th and found my family well. How glad to be at home 
again! And we feel thankful to our Heavenly Father for his 
care over us during my absence, so that at our family altar we 
feel to say when I review the dangers and escapes I was in, that 
goodness and mercy have followed me all the days of my life and 
that He has covered my head in the day of battle. I can never 
forget you. My daily prayer is that God will spare your life to 
labor for the poor soldier. The day never passes but I think of 
the many favors received from Surgeon in Charge and officers. 
I was nowhere since I left home where I felt so satisfied as at the 
Hospital. May the Lord bless you and all those who labor with 
you, and at last may you hear the sweet voice of your Savior 
say, ' In as much as ye have done it unto the least of these, ye 
have done it unto me.' 

Wm. H. . 

Furloughed : 

, Wyoming County, N. Y., Dec. 14, 1863. 

My Dear Friend. 

This is to inform you that I arrived at home on the 12th. We 
stayed at the Soldiers' Home in New York, so it cost us nothing. 
I got home next day and took them by surprise. You can 
imagine how happy we were. I think she looked a little older, 
though not so sad as when we parted. I was much fatigued, but 
think I shall be better in a few days. I can never half thank 
you for all your kindness while I was there. 

G. C. 

/ think she looked a little older. Who shall tell the story 
of the women at home, or measure the hope and the fear 

and the "constant anguish of patience "? 



147 

These are sons and fathers worthy of each other : 

, Wisconsin, July 29, 1863. 

Dear Miss 

I take my pen to let you know that I received your kind but 
distressing letter telling of the death of my dear son. But he fell 
on the field, defending his country ! My stranger friend, I am 
happy to think you respected my son to take such care of him 
during his illness. I hope you will answer this letter and give 
me more particulars about his death, and if he said anything 
about anything at home, or if he mentioned any of the family, or 
if he said anything about dying, and if he was buried with the 
honors of war. But I have said all that I can say by thanking 
you a thousand times, and bring my letter to a close by asking 
God to bless you. 

C. S. 

No man was buried without the "honors of war," as 
prescribed in the Army Regulations. The Colonel of a 
raw regiment encamped near by, once complained to the 
Surgeon in Charge that the firing over the grave made 
his men "nervous" and begged him to discontinue it, but 
with no avail. 

, N. Y. Oct. 13, 1863. 

Miss 



Yours of the 8th was received informing me of my son 
Lorenzo's death. Great as is his loss to me yet from the tone of 
your letter I feel reconciled to the will of our Divine Master. I 
have four sons in the Federal Army ; would I had four more. I 
would give them freely, hoping for their welfare and trusting in 
God. God's will be done. In your letter you wrote you wanted 
to write more fully soon. Do so, and let \ le know if he was con- 
scious of his situation, his last words a: d feelings, and all his 



148 



sayings in his last hours. Should you know of anything which 
may have been desired by him, please inform me. 

B. M. 

, Ohio, Feb. 25, 1864. 

Dear Brother, 

We received your letter to-day. Father says you must take 
good care of yourself. He says he is going to keep a pair of 
white-faced oxen for you. Mother says the time seems long since 
she saw you. She wants you to take care of your health and be 
a good boy. She wants you to write once a week certainly. If 
you want anything you can't get, let us know, and we will try to 
get it for you. Give our best respects to Luke if he is there. I 
will get you some good story papers. 

Annie H. 

Private H. languished and died in Hospital ; the mother 
at home counting the time long since she saw her boy, 
and the ' white-faced oxen' waiting in the stalls. 

What a noble and pathetic letter is this last in the 
handful ! The father and the mother write : 

, N. Y., March 1864. 

Dear Friend, 

We feel very thankful to you for the respect you have shown 
our dear son. We feel to bless God that He raised up such good 
friends. We felt you did all you could for our son, and more for 
being so kind as to write to us and let us know where are laid 
his mortal remains. You wrote you thought he was praising 
God. It was the greatest comfort to us of anything. To think 
that we shall one day meet where there is no war, no enemies, no 
blood and carnage ; where our suffering is all done with ! We 
should like to know if Amos bore it patiently. He was always 
very patient at home. We are old and infirm. It was hard part- 



149 



ing with him when he left home. It seems sometimes that I 
could almost hear him praising God and beckoning* It will not 
be long. We will pray for you in your station, and for those 
who administered to the wants of our son. We feel for others as 
well as ourselves. We are not alorie by thousands. We have one 
son left ; he has lost part of his hand ; and one son-in-law with 
Banks. We would like to know if Amos said anything about his 
friends. Was it so that he could not talk much ? How did his 
mind appear to run? It seems he would have said something 
about his father ; he always thought so much of him. Was his 
mind on prayer or on the Bible ? He wrote to me that if he fell 
he should fall safe. He said he prayed for us and for himself. 
But his place is vacant. But we have One to go to who can be 
touched with our infirmities. If you think of anything more let 
us know. We should be glad of anything more. 

From your friends Geoege and Lucy , 

His father and mother. 

On the 12th of May 1864, keeping a standing engage- 
ment with the Sanitary Commission, G. got a furlough of 
a few days and went to Fredericksburg ; and presently, 
into the order and comfort of the Hospital came, in sharp 
contrast, two or three letters from her, written on odd 
leaves of paper, mercilessly abbreviated in every other 
word. 

Belle Plain, Va., May 13, 1864. 
On the S. C. boat, pulling up to the shore Government flat- 
boats of horses and cavalry recruits. There are no docks and 
the army supplies are being landed from barges connected by 
pontoons with the shore. A constant stream of contrabands 
passing with bags of grain and barrels of pork on their shoul- 
ders. Dr. Douglas and Dr. Agnew are here. Good Dr. Cuyler 



150 



is here. Senator Ponieroy is on board going down to bring up 
General Bartlett of Massachusetts who went into the fight with a 

Palmer leg and was wounded again. Col. tells me there 

has been great anxiety at the War Department. Mr. Stanton 
said to him, — " When we have a victory the whole North shall 

know it." — "And when there is silence?" said Col. . "Then," 

said the Secretary, — " there is no communication with the front." 
We have a Feeding-Station on shore and are putting up another 
two miles away, on the hill, where ambulance trains halt some- 
times for hours, owing to obstructions in the road. The mud is 
frightful and the rain is coming on again. We are directed to 
take the return train of ambulances for Fredericksburg. 

Just as I finished, the train from Fredericksburg arrived. Noth- 
ing I have ever seen equals the condition of these men. They 
had been two or three days in the ambulances ; roads dreadful ; 
no food. We have been at work with them from morning till 
night without ceasing ; filling one boat, feeding the men ; fill- 
ing another, feeding them. There is no sort of use in trying to 
tell you the story. I can scarcely bear to think of it. All the 
nurses and cooks from the Invalid Corps of our Hospital, who 
marched off that day, Sullivan, Lewis and the rest, armed with 
muskets again, are down here guarding prisoners. Yesterday 
a squad of rebel officers was marched on board a boat lying by 
ours. I had to pass through their ranks to get supplies from our 
boat, and shook hands with our boys and saw the officers ; Stew- 
art and Bradley Johnson among them ; strong well-fed, iron 
looking men, all of them. There's no ' give in ' in such looking 
men as these. Our soldiers from the front say the rebels stand — 
stand — in solid masses, giving and taking tremendous blows and 
never being shoved an inch. It is magnificent ! 

No words can express the horrible confusion of this place. The 
wounded arrive one train a day, but the trains are miles long ; 
blocked by all sorts of accidents, wagon trains, bad roads, broken 
bridges ; two, three days on the way, plunged in quagmires, jolted 



151 

over corduroy, without food, fainting, starving, filthy ; frightfully 
wounded, arms gone to the shoulder, horrible wounds in face and 
head. I would rather a thousand times have a friend killed on 
the field than suffer in this way. It is worse than White House, 
Harrison's, or Gettysburg by far. Many die on the way. We 
found thirty-five dead in the ambulances yesterday, and six more 
died on the stretchers while being put on board the boats. The 
boats are anything that can be got hold of, cattle scows, any- 
thing. Barges of horses are landed by the side of the transports 
and the horses cross the deck where the helpless men lie. Mules, 
stretchers, army wagons, prisoners, dead men and officials as 
good as dead are tumbled and jumbled on the wretched dock 
which falls in every little while and keeps the trains waiting for 
hours. We fed the men at once. We fed all the five boats that 
got off yesterday. There is no Government provision for this, 
beyond bread ; no coffee, no soup, no cups or pails, or vessels of 
any kind for holding food. The men eat as if starving. These 
had been three days without food. We are ordered to Fredericks- 
burg today to report to Dr. Douglas, as there is more misery there 
than here. 

Fredericsburg, Va., May 19, 1864. 
All right. Hard work, dirt and death everywhere. Mrs. Gib- 
bons arrived last night. She and her daughter are assigned to 
a fearful place, where they are working hard. I am in the Feed- 
ing-Station. Men are continually brought in and stowed away 
in filthy warehouses called distributing stations, where for three 
or four days no one in particular seems responsible for them- 
They are frightfully wounded and die in numbers in the stations. 
No provision whatever for feeding them is made by Govern- 
ment, beyond hard-tack and coffee. We go about among them 
and feed them. I have good men as assistants and can have 
more. I have a room of special cases near by, besides the general 
station. Three of these died last night. Care came too late. 
They had been several days on the field after being shot ; in and 



152 



out of the enemy's hands ; taken, retaken. Mr. Clarke of Paris 
and Mr. Thaxter are busy everywhere ; Mr. Clarke with a tear 
in his eye and a rose in his button-hole. More straw stealing, 
corn-shuck stealing, plank-stealing (the townspeople refuse to 
sell and we steal everything we can lay our hands on for the 
patients) ; more grateful, suffering, patient men ; more dirt and 
unnecessary shifting about of the wounded. 

May 22. 

Dr. Buck and Dr. Markoe went this morning. Dr. Clark of 
Boston is still here. More like these three gentlemen would 
have been an unspeakable blessing. Orders about transporta- 
tion of wounded have been given and countermanded and given 
again. Tent hospitals have been put up and then surgeons 
ordered not to fill them. No confusion was ever greater. Orders 
came from Washington that the Rail-road should be repaired — 
why was it not done ten days ago ? and the wounded sent by it. 
Then orders came withdrawing guard from Rail-road. The 
Medical Department refused to send wounded over an un- 
guarded road. Telegram from "Washington that wounded should 
go by boat. Telegram back that trains of wounded were already 
over the pontoons, ready to go by Rail-road if protected. Tele- 
gram that they should go by boat. Trains come back to boat. 
River falling ; rumors of blockade. One boat full got painfully 
off. Second boat off. Ambulance trains at many hospital doors. 
Go round and feed the w r orst cases for embarking. Get on an 
ambulance of the train and feed some poor fellows with egg- 
nog ; one, shot through the lungs, one, through thigh, and move 
on with the slow-moving procession, — at every moment a jolt 
and a " God have mercy on me !" — through the darkness, over 
the pontoons, to the Rail-road again. 

The moving of the men is what no one likes to think of. No 
selection is made ; such and such places are ' cleared' without 
regard to cases, and every day six or eight men are taken out of 



153 

the ambulances at Belle Plain dead, who would have lived if 
they had been quiet, while the city is full of men slightly hurt. 

I cooked and served to-day 926 rations of farina, tea, coffee, 
soft crackers and good, rich soup, chicken, turkey and beef, 
out of those blessed cans. The great confusion in regard to 
Governmeut feeding of the men in Fredericsburg, after the 
difficulty of getting up enough food over the road, comes from 
the stupid division of the hospitals into so many parts. Each 
little shop full, or room full, or collection of woimded men has a 
surgeon, usually civilian contractor. He reports to the surgeon 
in charge of the group of rooms, shops, etc. This officer reports 
to surgeon of division ; surgeon of division to corps surgeon ; 
corps surgeon draws on the commissary for number of rations 
he needs for the day. The rations are divided and sub-divided ; 
so much for corps, so much for division, so much for each 
hospital, and then the ward-master for each hospital takes the 
food in the rough and has it cooked, and all the little shops and 
rooms send and get it in tin cups and old pails. It has often 
been ten o'clock at night before ' dinner was ready,' and when 
you consider that many of these men require feeding every hour 
or two, you may easily see how important have been the ' irreg- 
ular' supplies of the Sanitary Commission and other organiza- 
tions. 

We are lodged with a fine old lady, mild and good, in a garden 
full of roses. We board ourselves. We have crackers, some- 
times soft bread, sometimes beef. We have plenty and are well. 
Last night we had a slice of ham all round. The wounded are 
being removed. The town will be deserted in a few days. We 

are sweeping and cleaning Mrs. 's rooms to leave the old 

lady as well off as we can, for all her servants have packed their 
feather beds and frying-pans and declare they will go with us. 

Having a moment of leisure Gr. wrote once more, and 
this time it was about the roses in Fredericsburg. 



154 

Augur's reinforcements have passed through. As the troops 
went forward along the street, they were met by the ambulances 
of wounded from the front who thrust out their poor hands and 

waved and Aveakly cheered them. Mrs. 's house has a large, 

old-time garden full of roses ; indeed the whole town is brimming 
with early flowers. We begged and received permission to take 
all we could gather, and filled our baskets, trays and the skirts of 
our gowns with snow-balls, lemon-blossoms and roses yellow, 
white and red. The 8th New York Heavy Artillery was in the 
column. In the headstall of Colonel Peter Porter's horse we 
fastened a knot of roses, and tossed roses and snow-balls in 
showers over the men. They were delighted. — " In Frederics- 
burg /" — they said ; — " Oh, give me one ;" — " Pray give me one ;" — 
" I will carry it into the fight for you ;" and another, cheerily, — 
" I will bring it back again !" 

Three days afterwards the ambulances came ; and in them 
came some of the same men, shattered, dying, dead. We went 
out, but this time it was with pails of soup and milk-punch. One 
and another recognized us ; all were cheery enough. — " A different 
coming back ma'am." — "No roses to-day!" — and one said, point- 
ing over his shoulder, — " The Lieutenant is there on the stretcher, 
and he's brought back the flowers as he promised." I went to 
the side, hoping to help a wounded man. The Lieutenant lay 
dead, with a bunch of dead roses in the breast of his coat. 

A woman-nurse transferred to a General Hospital 
farther North writes of her experience : 

I have one hundred men in my ward, all in bed. The surgeons 
appear to give very little care to the diet but are down on any 
one else who does. The food is very poor and insufficient. The 
cooks seem to have it all their own way. The ladies are not 
allowed to superintend in the kitchen or have anything to do 



155 



with it. For thirty-eight of my men the ward surgeon orders in 
general terms, milk and eggs. It is grimly amusing to hear him 
say day after day ; " milk and eggs for thirty-eight." One egg 
apiece, each meal, is all I can ever get from the cooks and for 
two days there have been no eggs at all. The milk rations are 
always short. At least once a day a clean sweep is made by 
some one, of all the light diets ; so all that these thirty-eight 
men, many of whom are fearfully exhausted, have often had from 
the hospital, has been a little rice which they can't bear and a 
slice of bread. No steak and potatoes, no egg-nog, no milk- 
punch, nothing generous whatever comes into the ward. 

All this wears upon one infinitely more than the hard work. 
What shall we give in place of the missing eggs ? How shall we 
make up these miserably scanty rations ? I have opened a pri- 
vate account at the village store for bread, butter, eggs and milk 
enough for the ward, and we shall provide brandy and whiskey 
for the punches. I am told to ' exercise my own judgment ' in 
giving these out. No stimulant list has ever been furnished me. 
Our ward surgeon has gone to a horse race which seems to be a 
pretty long one, and a strange surgeon looks in now and then. 
The surgeon in charge seems kind in manner, visits the wards 
and attends to serious operations himself. He appears to do his 
part in the routine of the hospital, drawing rations, issuing them 
to the stewards, etc., strictly according to regulations, but seems 
to think that stewards are the best persons to manage the food 
business. The hospital fund could and should provide every- 
thing. The object of the minor officers seems to be to subsist 
the men on nothing and avoid making a row. All that we women 
can do is to keep up a steady glare with the ' eye of justice' 
and that, I assure you, we do. Our own quarters are poor, cold 
and leaky. For three nights we have been all crowded together 
while wash-tubs, standing in the places of the beds, caught the 
rain beating in through walls and roof. 

A set of regulations was promulgated this p. m. regarding 
female nurses, of which I give you as a specimen, Number Five ; 



156 

'All deliberations, discussions and remarks having the object of 
expressing comparative praise, or censure of the medical officers 
of this hospital, or of their individual course or conduct are 
positively prohibited.' The provision against our praise is truly 
judicious ! 

But the worst of it is we cannot keep the men alive. Eleven 
have died in three days. Our usual three died last night from 
what the Chaplain facetiously calls the " dying corner." This 
officer's ministrations are something in this style ; — " Do you 
believe in a future state ; yes ; well ; ah ; then you hope for better 
things ; then ; ah ; yes ; you will die happy ; good morning 
brother." This to a man who thinks he is getting well is some- 
thing of a damper. This afternoon, Sunday, he made a few re- 
marks to the effect that death was waiting for them all, prolong- 
ing the subject till the usual afternoon funeral passed by, and 
bringing it in neatly ; ' Even now one of your comrades is being 
carried to the grave.' 



We wrote many letters for the men. These differed 
curiously sometimes. One young fellow very badly hurt 
wishes it said that he is ' bully ' and will be ' round in 
a few days.' Another, slightly wounded, dictates a fear- 
ful epistle to his friends evidently meaning to ' make 
their flesh creep ;' — " So they put me on the table, blood 
and bones sticking out in every direction," etc. "But 
shan't I add that you are better now?" — "Well never 
mind that ;" says the hero. The indignation of an old 
Irishman on being asked if he wanted to write to his 
wife, was droll, but rather justified by the style of her 
last letter to him ; "My cherished husband, it is with 



157 



intence sorrow that I hear you are wounded. I never 
expected to see you more. I thought by this time your 
blood like others of your countrymen was watering the 
soil of Virginia/' etc., etc. He presented the letter to 
G., saying he had no use for it. 

These are from the parcel labelled ' letters from the field ;' 
they are from six or eight different soldiers and are taken 
in the order of their dates. All show more or less of the 
men and the time. 

A+. '' 1862. 
The brandy and other things you gave me just before going 
off were very valuable. A soldier of the 5th Maine, on picket 
with us a few nights ago, was struck by a ball which broke his 
leg. He crawled through the rain and cold of that miserable 
night, half a mile, on his hands and knees to the reserve picket, 
and was just fainting when I came up with the brandy treasured 
for just such a moment. I hope we shall not be cheated out of 
a good fight. I hope J. and F. will contrive to have a good 
fight. 

Poor boys, they were at it already, thinking it would 
be all over in sixty days : 

Co. 6, — N. Y. Vols. 
July 6, 1862. 

We are watching with fearful earnestness the operations be- 
fore Richmond. With what a will we gave ' three times three,' 
when the Colonel told us on parade that he had heard from 
reliable, though not official sources that Richmond is ours ; how 
dreadful the shock when we found McClellan had fallen back, 
losses 15,000, and it was very little comfort that our army is in a 
better position for a fight than ever. I ought not to call in ques- 



158 

tion the doings of my superiors, but it seems as if everything were 
put back for weeks. 

Near Falmouth, Va., 23 Jan., 1863. 

On the 20th the greater part of Hooker's and Franklin's Divi- 
sions began to march up river, to cross and fight the " final de- 
cisive battle " which McClellan forgot to fight on the Chicka- 
hominy. Then came the dreadful storm of wind, rain and sleet 
of the night of the 20th, lasting till now. After struggling with 
mud for forty-eight hours the whole expedition is countermarch- 
ing miserably ; stragglers by thousands ; the road strung along 
with guns and wagons ; everybody wet, miry, cold, hungry and 
dreary. Just before this last movement some thousands of sick 
were sent to Aquia Creek. When they got there they found 
little or no provision made for them, so in a few days nearly all 
were sent back, some almost dying. They returned here in the 
midst of the storm with orders to " rejoin their regiments ;" — their 
regiments meanwhile had marched away. I begin to long a 
little for a short deliverance. If we were only always fighting 
and marching — but muddy camps are tiresome. We have read 
the testimony before the McDowell and Porter court martial, 
the Prince de Joinville and Gurowski. The sun is coming out. 
I will go out and dry in it. 

What could we do here without the Sanitary Commission. 
Many of our medicines, our stimulants, blankets, bedding, etc., 
for the field hospital come from the S. C. I would rather have 
Mr. Olmsted's fame than that of any General in this war since 
the beginning. Direct to me Co. N. Y. Vols. 

Camp, August 7, 1863. 
We are sweltering in the middle of a large field in a full glare 
of the hottest sun. Our camps are selected in this way : an 
officer takes a thermometer and casts about for the hottest spot 
and there the flag is planted. Our tent, is at ' water boils.' We 
are delighted to see the draft progressing and hope we shall soon 



159 



have large batches of men, and one more campaign will finish up 
tJie war. 

October 9, 1863. 

The drafted men come in by driblets, but like the ' little drops 
of water ' may in time make a swelling flood. So far they only 
make up for sick men and men on detached service. When they 
first began to come there was a disposition to make fun of them, 
but now we take very kindly to each other. They look as new 
and clean as the Seventh New York did in Maryland. The other 
day when a batch arrived, the place was full of loafers and a 
band was playing. " If I'd a' known it was like this, I'd a' come 
long ago," — one of them said. I hope he'll say so the first time 
he charges on a battery. 

No furloughs are granted now, except under extraordinary 
circumstances. John Doyle sent up yesterday with his applica- 
tion the telegram he had from home. — " Phil and Sophy are dead 
and the four others are expected to die." He got his fifteen 
days. 

Many of the drafted men and substitutes who found 
their way to us in Hospital, at this time and later, were 
of the most worthless character, mere bounty-swindlers 
and refuse of foreign countries. One lost in their 
unblushing frauds all pity for their hopeless disability. 
One man in our camp for instance, who had received 
nearly a thousand dollars in bounties and had been two 
months in the service, applied to his ward surgeon for dis- 
charge on the ground of epileptic fits of fourteen years 
standing. These, — mother and wife, — were the men who 
came down to stand beside your 

' Stainless soldier on the walls.' 



160 



Some in their heroic deaths made us forget their 
shameful lives ; many deserted ; a few let us hope, went 
home better men ; hundreds drifted into hospitals, were 
discharged and re-enlisted for another bounty elsewhere. 
The men who ' stood the draft' and came down were of a 
far better class than the substitutes. Now and then there 
was a curious case among these. S — . H — . of New 
Hampshire was drafted in May, 1864, sent to Concord, 
thence to Boston Harbor, to Alexandria and to Camp 
Distribution near Alexandria. He was then set to work 
on Arlington Heights' fortifications, taken ill and sent to 
us. From us he was sent to Cliff burne barracks to be 
examined for the V. R. C, was declared unfit for the 
corps and returned to us. Never having been assigned 
to any regiment he could draw neither pay nor clothes. 
He had eight children. He was an excellent, faithful 
nurse, being put on that duty in the Hospital and doing 
it admirably. 

The Sanitary Commission afterwards arranged the case 
and secured pay for the time he had been in service, and 
he went home rejoicing. 

In Camp, 6tJt April, 1864. 
Grant has not pulled ns out of the mud yet. I think the 
" side issue " at Fort Monroe must have been only a trip to see 
how the land lies. If it lies as loose and moist as it does here, 
he certainly doesn't mean fight. Dr. H. came down to stay 
over Sunday, and preach to us soldiers, but he addressed his 



161 

city congregation. — " You who see every day in the streets and 
shops " — much we do ! — " and in your own comfortable dwell- 
ings," etc., or, " There is no child before me too young to," etc., 
etc. General Sheridan said to be a first-class cavalry officer 
has come to Headquarters. Great things are expected of him. 
He is said to be an ordinary looking little man who tells with 
a peculiar accent how well his men " done" in the West. 

Sootii of Germanna Ford, May 5, 1864. 

We have had probably the hardest fight of this campaign. 
Our losses have been great, for the fighting on both sides was 
desperate. But all goes well, and we are in good spirits, and 
confident of finishing up the thing this time. The ground is the 
very worst kind for fighting, a perfect wilderness of dense 
forests and underbrush where you would suppose it impossible 
for anything to get through. Your note reached me today 
when the musketry was very loud. Hurray for the American 
eagle ! 

May 16, 18G4. 

I can't begin to give you any account of the fight at Spott- 
sylvania. We are resting after hard marching and fighting 
and waiting for more men ; some have come. While the enemy 
cannot make good his losses we shall fill up the gaps by Augur's 
men. We have whipped the enemy. Don't say, ' Why don't 
they follow it up.' Remember that to follow up rapidly and 
destroy such an army as Lee's, through this country after nine 
days of hard fighting is simply impossible. There has been a 
large amount of straggling. The weary marches through the 
mud after hard fighting during the day, have done much of this. 
They are scattered and lost through the woods. We are in 
great straits for rations, but hopeful and in good spirits. " Ain't 
I glad " to be out of the Wilderness ! A little way from our 
camp we see the enemy's line — a dirt-colored human fence 
against the green trees. 

11 



162 



June 30, 1864. 
We are on the left near the Weldon K. R, and are looking 
for news from Lynchburg. If Lee would only come out and 
fight — the army above all things desires it. We are marching in 
intolerable heat and dust, building miles of works, fighting day 
and night, never relieved and never safe from bullets. Some- 
times I have laid down at night on the ground feeling that I 
could endure it no longer. Then I go and get behind the breast- 
works and listen to the talk so full of hope that one can't help 
feeling better for it. 

In Camp, September 4, 1864. 

The convalescents and recruits come in slowly. They are 
often improperly marched and give out on their way to their 
regiments and have to be returned to hospital. Poor little 
squads of companies now make up some of the regiments. Com- 
pany commanders, corporals, have been heard to say — " Fall 
in Company A. Fall in men, both of you." It is rumored there 
will be fighting to-morrow, owing to Early's return from the 
Valley. I suppose if we have had the great victory that is 
rumored we shall know it soon. As for McClellan, no matter 
what personal frienship may exist for him among the soldiers, I 
don't see how a soldier can endorse the Chicago platform. 
I cannot think that the people of the North mean anything 
but a continuance of the war until it is finished in the entire 
subjugation of the South. The soldiers have never known 
General McClellan in the dress he now wears. I, for my part, 
don't want to think I have spent two years in the army for 
nothing at all. We are to have a national salute in honor of 
Atlanta to-night. 

September 9, 1864. 

Yesterday some of the men of both sides were stealing out 
between the lines to talk and trade together, exchanging papers 
and comparing views on politics and the war. They had a little 



163 

dog for mail-carrier, and wrote each other notes in loving terms, 
as "My dear Johnny Keb," or " My dear Yank," in which they 
compareu the price of cheese and tobacco and enclosed the 
orders of the General inviting deserters. There is no sign of 
discouragement out here. It is like the old times of 1861. The 
adherents of McClellan are dropping off daily. 

Camp 120th Vols., Feb. 12, 1865. 

It is a bleak, desolate day and we are at work building for the 
third time this winter our little city of logs. I cannot under- 
stand what we have accomplished by the week of fighting and 
exposure, to which another week must be added before we can 
be comfortable, unless it is a diversion in favor of Sherman. 
When we came away the two chapels were none too large ; the 
Dinwiddie Literary Association was a capital institution. Then 
we had every Thursday evening a general singing exercise, a 
class in the rudiments of music two afternoons a week, a Bible- 
class, and an old-fashioned spelling-class in prospect. It is to 
the chapel that my heart turns back most regretfully. It was 
unhewn and rude, but Ruskin might well enough mention it 
along with the mediaeval cathedrals as an illustration of the 
Lamp of Sacrifice, for it was built as to the Lord, with a loving- 
spirit. By the end of the week we hope to have a new chapel 
up, though by the end of the week we may have made another 
move by the left flank. 

Hilton Head, S. 0., Feb. 23, 1865. 
One of the regiments here is the 3d U. S. C. T. the Inspector 
says, the best drilled of the Colored Troops, with as much snap 
in the manual of arms as any white troops he has seen. 
The orderly-sergeant of one company was a field hand, slave, 
five months ago ; now he keeps all the company books in excel- 
lent condition. The 103d recruiting here, is made up altogether 
of men who were slaves, who came into our lines in the wake 



164 



of Sherman. We heard of the evacuation of Charleston last 
night. The ships in the harbor made a show of fireworks. 

12 Miles from Farmville, Va., 8lh April, 1865. 
It is hard to realize that the rebels are at last pushed to the 
wall, and that it is quite probable that Lee will surrender to- 
morrow. If you could have heard and seen the Sixth Corps 
marching through Farmville last night you would think they 
alone could finish up the rebellion — and they could. We have 
outrun our wagon train two days and nights. The roads are full 
of the wreck of Lee's army and his men are hustled to the rear 
by hundreds. They say that 10,000 have thrown away their 
muskets in the woods. Who would have thought ten days ago 
that things would come to this pass ! 

Appomattox C. H., 10th April, 1865. 
We find it hard to realize the state of things ; no Army of 
Northern Virginia; no lines beyond which it is dangerous to 



last night. I looked for G. among them. I hear he is all right. 
They gave our men for rations three ears of raw corn, each day. 
That Johnston will surrender and that the end of the war has 
really come we do not doubt. It is a good thing to have had a 
part in this wonderful campaign. 

City Point, Va., April 12, 1865. 
It has been a tiresome march, but think of the results! A 
long column of prisoners coming in, with Custis Lee, Ewell 
and other rebel Generals at its head. We shall probably start 
for Richmond to-day. 

April 24, 1 865. 
I trust General Giant will i?et General Sherman on the right 
track again. How he could ever have been switched off at such 
an angle I cannot imagine. Think of the rebels walking off to 



165 

their State arsenals with their guns in their hands. It would be 
a surrender of Sherman to Johnston, instead of the other way. 
I think the Ninth Corps will encamp in the neighborhood of the 
Hospital soon. 

This letter comes from the field accompanied by a gor- 
geous blue and gold photograph book, bought of some 
wretch of a camp sutler at an exorbitant price. 

Camp before Petersburg, July, 1864. 

Esteemed Fbiend, 

A proposal was agreed on between Corporal F. and me last 
winter to present you with a suitable present worthy of your 
kindness to us, but owing to Corporal F. being sent home on 
furlough, it was put off. Then, I had joined my Regiment and 
we have had no time to do anything owing to the campaign we 

have just passed through. The Corporal is in Hospital. 

I have been through the campaign with only slight bruises for a 
wonder, as the boys of the company say that I cannot go into 
battle without being wounded. I am expecting a commission 
this month. I am confident of a speedy success over the rebel- 
lion. I am in good spirits and determined to do my duty. Our 
regiment has behaved with great gallantry, though our loss is 
heavier than ever. We have but 136 men for duty. Please 
accept this gift in remembrance of us and our suffering comrades. 

W. H. Sergeant. 

J. F. Corporal. 

The Sergeant received his commission, was wounded 
again before Richmond, recovered, was mustered out 
with his regiment at the close of the war, and wrote to 
me that he was on his way to the Rocky Mountains to 
seek his fortune. I have no doubt that he will find it. 



166 



THE SUPERINTENDENTS SERVICE OF PLATE. 

One morning after a large number of soldiers had been 
returned to duty, this letter without name, was found in 
the Post-Office box at the store-room door. 

Miss 

These few imperfect lines are designed to express the grati- 
tude of one of the many grateful hearts indebted to you, by the 
mauy kind words and deeds you have bestowed on us, the sick 
and wounded soldiers of this Hospital. 

When in your presence we find it impossible to express our 
thankfulness, and fearing that you may think us incapable of 
appreciating your kindness, and in justice to our own hearts, I 
have, with the approval of my comrades, resolved to try to com- 
municate to you some little evidence of our regard. Though I 
am confident my poor pen will not do our feelings justice still I 
hope to be able to convince you that the soldiers sometimes 
think of you and are not forgetful of your kindness. 

The many expressions of sympathy and encouragement that 
have dropped from your lips are treasured up and prized by us 
with reverence and honorable pride. We know that to you we 
are indebted for many of the comforts and good things we en- 
joy here. Please accept this acknowledgment of our gratitude 
with the assurance that if our prayers are answered, your jour- 
ney of life will be one of uninterrupted happiness and prosperity, 
and your final reward such as God only can bestow. 
I am very respectfully 

One of many soldiers. 



LAST DAYS 



The last few months of Hospital life were full of excite- 
ment and toil. There was great rejoicing when the news 
came that Richmond was fallen and the war ended. 
Thunder and smoke ran at once round all the circle of the 
forts, an improvised salute without orders ; and pistol- 
cracking, shouts and music filled the air. The men 
moved about in little squads, in marching time, singing 
by snatches, "Rally round the Flag," and 

% ' The star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave, 
O'er the land of the Free and Jeff Davis his grave." 

Certain of the cripples hobbled out of the barracks, 
turned southward and long and solemnly waved and 
brandished their crutches in the air. It seemed to do 
them good. At night the City was illuminated, and we 
saw from the tower the long lines of buildings and the 
great dome pricked out in light upon the dark-blue dis- 
tance, and the red glare of the joy-fires reflected in the 
sky. 

Presently a large number of wounded men, the men 
who had taken Richmond, came up on the steamers and 
kept us very busy for a time. It was delightful to work 
for these men. Their spirit was magnificent. The tide 



170 

was at the full. The rush to break all bounds and get 
home had not yet begun. — " You have left one foot for 
the rebels?" " Oh yes, the rebels have got it, but then 
you know Richmond's gone up." " It was your right 
arm?" — "Yes, but the war is over and the country is 
saved ; they might have had the other arm if they had 
wanted it ;" — and, " So say we all of us !" half sang, half 
shouted all the maimed men within hearing. The little 
groups about the doors were always breaking into hurrahs 
on the slightest occasion or allusion. 

Very coldly on the thunder and the shouting fell the 
dark April morning on which a vague rumor of the Tra- 
gedy in the City crept through the camp like a deadly, 
chilling fog. A trivial matter made the rumor known at 
first. John came to the store-room to say that the 
market wagons were turned back from the outer guard, 
and the Special Diet supplies had not come ; that no milk- 
carts or mail riders had got through ; that " something" 
must have happened. By degrees, no one knew how or 
whence, the story came ; a darker and darker version 
every hour. We believed nothing, till the Surgeon in 
Charge being well known, passed the guard as a medical 
officer, went to Headquarters in the nearest town, and 
after two or three hours delay, got back with authentic 
information. 

Hard work was a blessing in those cold and heavy 



171 

hours ; all our expedients with reserves of canned meats 
and soups were called into use ; no supplies came out for 
a day or two ; every house and hut in the neighborhood 
was surrounded and searched, and comers and goers were 
sharply questioned. 

How the sun shone and how loud the birds sang on 
that Easter Sunday ! I remember the keen impression 
made by little things. I can smell the lilacs now. In 
intervals of work when we sat down to rest we sat with 
folded hands looking at each other in silence. The men 
came with streaming tears to ask for bits of crape and 
ribbon to fasten on their sleeves. " It's with me, night 
and day ;" they say, — " I can't sleep for thinking," — " If it 
had been nxy own brother, "—and the roughest of all con- 
traband women in the quarters, drawing the back of her 
hand across her eyes, says — " Oh Missis ! I feel like as if 
my own kin was gone." 

On Easter Monday the Chaplain went to a meeting of 
ministers of the District and the whole body waited on 
Mr. Johnson at the Treasury Building. The President 
replied with apparent emotion to the address and resolu- 
tions, saying in closing ; "The American people need to 
be educated to see that Treason is a Crime." 

On the Funeral Day the chapel was crowded for the 
solemn service. We had, unhappily, black shawls and 
crape veils enough among us, and the pulpit and chancel 



172 

were hung with the soft, dark folds. The men all wore 
tokens of mourning. There was not a contraband hut 
in all the fields between the Hospital and the City but had 
its poor little rag of black above the door. 

Homeward coining troops began to arrive in the neigh- 
borhood. First came the Ninth Corps and spread their 
tents just beyond our fields, and soon on every slope and 
ridge about us lay the camps of Sherman and of the Army 
of the Potomac, musical by day, smoky and twinkling by 
night, picturesque always. From the tower top in the 
twilight we saw low belts of smoke marking the outline 
of " the watch fires of a thousand circling camps," and 
all day long we heard the shouts and the brass-music. 
Squads of sick men came in, hourly, from all the outlying 
regiments, some in ambulance trains, some wearily creep- 
ing up on foot ; — measles, chronic diarrhoea, typho-ma- 
larial fever ; — men dragged about with their regiments, 
some in the third week of fever, came in speechless or 
wandering and died just after getting on a clean bed. 
This was the ' grand march home.' 

Convalescents from among these men and the men 
from the camps thronged the store-room all day long. 
The tower was a beacon ; one said to another — " Do you 
see that ' cupalo' ? There's a sanitary up there" — and as 
far as the stores held out they were gladly given to all, 
the Hospital inmates of course having the first choice. 



173 

" Sherman's men" were generally tall, loose-hung, hand- 
some fellows, and wore the slouch hat and bit of feather. 
The Eastern men wore the trimmer foraging cap and 
were shorter and more compactly built. East and West 
' chaffed' each other now and then, but on the whole 
there was very little friction and a great deal of brother- 
hood. 

The patients who came to us were many of them very 
ill, thoroughly worn out ; we had scores of cases of ma- 
lignant fever besides other camp diseases ; they came 
weary, broken down, dusty, ragged, and what I never 
saw before, barefoot. 

This was the ' grand march home.' 

It was a keen pleasure to supply these men with shirts, 
socks, slippers for their travel-sore feet, tobacco, books, 
anything. In the wards it was good to see the bright- 
ness go up and down the lines of beds, following the 
plentiful supplies of illustrated papers and magazines. — 
"The Atlantic? Oh yes! I always used to read it." — 
"Just let me see that Harper. My folks always took 
that, but it's three years since I saw a copy." — " Dear me, 
this is just what we all want to rest us." "Did you 
really get those turkeys, boys, on the march to the sea ?" 
"Oh no'm," they laughed. — "We had our marching 
rations and were satisfied with them." 

Up to the store-room one morning, among others crept 



174 



W ., a Swiss from Wisconsin, meagre, shrivelled, and 

ragged, and looking twenty years older than his age. He 
came to see if he could get some blackberry syrup and 
a handkerchief, pulling out a rag of what had been a 
handkerchief once. " We were two brothers ;" this was 
his little story; "I had no wife; he had a wife and 
children. I said I could go better than he ; one must 
go ; so I went. I have been marching I think almost 
without rest for nearly a year, marching and fighting ; 
hard and heavy marches they were. But it is over now ; 
the country is safe, and perhaps I shall get well in Wis- 
consin. — (Alas ! he would never get well.) At any rate 
there is a God who takes care over (iiber) us all. At 
Chattanooga I saw God. I had but heard of Him before ; 
I shall see Him always, now." 

The men did not like the Great Review. " They say 
Grant means to march us through Pennsylvania avenue 
with our trains, about fifty miles of 'em. There may be 
people who like to see army trains ; I don't." It was 
very warm ; two or three men came in with sunstroke 
about that time ; one and all scolded about the Great 
Review. But when the day came all wanted to go as 
spectators at least, and the Hospital was half emptied of 
men and officers. No one abused the furlough. There 
was but little drunkenness or confusion among our own 
men, and wonderfully little among the regiments lying 



175 

about us. One provisional division made up of odd regi- 
ments and bits of regiments was a noisy, uneasy, turbu- 
lent throng. There was universal anxiety to break up 
and get home, but the men showed more patience and 
composure than many of their officers. 

We mustered out and discharged constantly, and con- 
stantly received new patients. We took in fourteen 
hundred and ninety in the last fortnight of May, and 
were obliged to care for them with make-shift ward- 
masters and * emergency' cooks. Every one wanted to 
go. Every one who had any claim to go was released at 
once by the Surgeon in Charge, who was carefully just 
and patient with those who went and those who stayed 
behind. Order 116 from the Adjutant General's office, 
mustering out all Veteran Reserves whose original regi- 
ments had gone home, made great confusion and trouble. 
It took every printer, every clerk from the office, every 
cook but one, — head nurses, ward-masters, and commis- 
sary sergeants. The only gleam of satisfaction was that 
it took the latest store-room orderly, the third in ten days, 
a dreadful boy who being sent into the next room to 
weigh stores comes back with cheeks smeared with sweet- 
meats and mouth crammed with cheese, and asks mum- 
bling, " Whodgerwantdonethemeggs ?" and brings in notes 
opening and reading them on the way and saying — " Oh ! 
here's into you about the punch !" Office business had 



176 

come nearly to a standstill, for the Surgeon in Charge, 
though he wrote all day and all night, could no more 
make out all the papers than the Superintendent could do 
all the cooking, when " as much of 116 A. G. 0. as 
relates to men of the Second Battalion," was rescinded. 
Meantime more than half these men had gone or were 
in process of going, and those who were obliged to 
remain could hardly be appeased, believing themselves 
victims of some injustice. 

We had at this season plenty of fresh vegetables, the 
sweetest and greenest of green peas, string beans, etc., 
from the Hospital garden. Those who doubt the pos- 
sibility of extracting sunbeams from cucumbers should see 
the effect of this and other vegetables in the convalescent 
wards. We had later, small fruits and peaches enough 
for the more delicate men. The new store-room orderly, 
the fourth in two weeks, having a bushel to pare and cut 
up for dinner begins at nine o'clock and at eleven applies 
for another man to help him. 

In an interval of work we went over to some of the 
field hospitals, and found the same old story ; measles, 
chronic diarrhoea, typhoid fever and pork and beans ; 
nothing else ; not even soft bread, — except in one place 
where there was some yellow slush being shaken about 
in a battered can in the smoke of the trench-fire ; this I 
was told was "fariny." Three or four men in this hos- 



177 

pital were very low. "Couldn't they send them to us or 
to town?" "No; wanted them on the rolls." They 
were off the rolls next morning. 

In the last days of June came the circular from the 
Sanitary Commission saying that its Field and Hospital 
Relief service was finished, — written across in pencil — 

For now the whole Round Table is dissolved, 

The old order changes, yielding place to new, 

And God fulfils Himself in many ways. 

Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer 

Than this world dreams of. * * * 

* * * Something ere the end, 

Some work of noble note may yet be done 

Not unbecoming men that strove with gods. 

Transfers and discharges thinned out the Hospital 
ranks. Two hundred and ninety men went in one day. 
Ward-masters and cooks, 'emergency men,' disappeared 
among them and it was very difficult to get through 
the day's work for the sixty to a hundred Special 
Diet patients on the returns in July. Volunteer labor 
was never more needed. The men who remained in the 
wards required more care and, owing to the general dis- 
organization, got less from the regular sources than ever 
before. Day by day we dissolved ; night by night the 
camps about us vanished. The slopes of the near hills, 
all twinkling and musical one evening, were on the next 

almost savagely silent and lonely. 

12 



178 

We saw now and then an ugly feature of the general 
disbanding. Private S. after the most careful and tender 
nursing was discharged one day and came back the next 
night robbed of his pay, quite tipsy and with a new and 
dishonorable wound in his arm. It was found that 
another discharged man had carried with him besides his 
Sanitary Commission comforts a beautiful saddle, a 
Christmas present from the medical officers to the Sur- 
geon in Charge. 

Men with the noses 

' Peculiar to persons named Levy and Moses ' 

hung about the camp waiting for their " friends." Regi- 
mental officers wrote ignorant and injudicious notes to 
their men, telling them they were ' musterd out 
already and kneed n't stay a day longer in Hospital if 
able to travil.' We were occasionally imposed on no 
doubt in issuing articles from the store-room, in spite of 

precautions on all sides, for old Mrs. B . came more 

than once to report, with characteristic twitch of the nose, 
that ' more of them destitute men were a wantin' packin' 
boxes to send their things home.' All but a faithful few 
shirked work and grumbled. These, though they will 
not see these pages, I thank from my heart once more. 
These few, surgeons, nurses and ward-masters worked, 
weary but unfaltering, day and night and parted sadly at 



179 

last, interchanging little trifles of remembrance and ' sor- 
rowing most of all that they should see each other's faces 
no more.' 

The last of July the final order came ; " You are 
directed to say how soon your Hospital can be emptied, 
property packed and place turned over, etc." The 
Surgeon in Charge, being a prodigious worker, answered : 
" In ten days." Those ten days were very laborious. 
The fatigues of all were aggravated by the intense heat. 
Five weeks of torrid fervors day and night had ended in 
a terrific wind-and-rain-storm, during which chimneys 
crashed through the roofs and trees were violently twisted 
out of the ground. Two or three priceless cool days 
followed and then the terrible August heats set in again. 
Early in that month the Sixteenth New York Heavy 
Artillery encamped in our grove, very glad, poor fellows, 
to come down from the bare and blazing ridge they had 
been spread over, very glad to have the last letter-paper, 
handkerchiefs and towels from the store-room and 
expressing their acknowledgments in the usual manner, 
through the band. 

All the Hospital goods were packed and boxed, and 
daily wagon-trains went down the hill carrying the 
" property " to the City ; the last of the sick were taken 
over — one man in his bed — to a City hospital, and in the 
middle of August the quartermaster made his last inspect- 



180 

ing tour, with a paper in his hand in which the fugi- 
tive owners of the place asked that the Secretary of War 
would " Restore the buildings, cause thorough repairs to 
be made and pay a proper rent for the time they had 
been occupied by the Government." 



In the still, fresh summer dawn we drove for the last 
time through the grove, down the long winding road to 
the highway leading to the City. The camp was silent 
and desolate, the store-room was empty and bare, the 
wards were quartermaster's lumber. Behind us the 
tower stood black against gray trailing clouds. Low 
flights of birds went circling round and round it. Before 
us the great dome showed spectral in the vapors of a 
sunrise that struggled and did not shine. 



sag 

r«<Oi-t 



: a a (u 
••a — .9 












t-<tO 

g P.o y 



7 S - * ' 

— P 3 a 



.-4 0* to 






HtOnlS 






«5 gi- 
lls! 



Iom a, 



si 






*IS* 3ass 



55 CO "S 0*^3 SSs 






SS 5 = 







(B) 



.186- 



Diet Return of Waed^ 



Whole number of enlisted men ; sick, wounded, and attendants 

Number eating in Mess Hall 

Number taking their meals in bed, or in the ward 

y/zS" Recapitulation by name and number of bed of all who have their food car- 
ried to them ; I e. , do not eat in Mess Hall. 



i:r.in-i..\« ihki's. 



Those blank spaces will be Ailed dp from 
time to time at these head-quarters with 
the names of such articles as can be 
afforded. When they are not filled up, 
ward Medical Office's will confine themselves 
entirely to the regular diets. 



Acting Assist. Suegeon, U. S. A., 
In charge of Ward. 



(C) 

U. 8. Aemy Gen'l Hospital, 



186 

The Commissary Steward will issue for Special Diet 

Beef, Onions, 

Bread, Oysters, 

Butter, Potatoes, 

Chickens, Pickles, 

Coffee, Rice, 

Dried Fruit, Salt, 

Milk, Soap, 

Mutton, Sugar. 



(D) 



COMMISSARY STEWARD'S EVENING REPORT. 



186- 



With this will bo returned the 
order, or orders, upon which tho 
purchases for tho day have been 
made, with the exact amount 
obtained, and price charged for 
each article, noted thereon by 
the seller. 



Surgkon U. S. Voia., 
In Chargo of Hospital. 



Remaining at last report 

Received 

Total to bo accounted for ... , 

To Diet Kitchen 

'< Mess Hall Kitchen ... 

' ' Steward '8 Mess 

" Women-nurses Mess . 

" Clerk's Mess 

" Laundry Moss 

" Dispensary 



Total issued . 
Remaining. .. 



Hospital Steward, U. S. A. 



(E-) 

U. S. AKMY GENERAL HOSPITAL, 











Va., 










186—. 


Messes. 




Deliver to Hospital Steward 


.„: u. s. a. 


Butter, 






Fish, Salt, 


Mackerel, 


Beets, 






Herbs, 


Oysters, 


Carrots, 






Kerosene Oil, 


Onions, 


Celery, 






Lard, 


Poultry, Dressed, 


Cranberries, 






Lamb, 


Potatoes, 


Cabbage, 






Live Chickens, 


Squash and Pumpkins. 


Cheese, 






Live Turkeys, 


Turnips, 


Eggs, 






Mutton, 


Veal. 


Fish, Fresh, 










And charge the 


same 


to 


Hospital Fund, U. 
Va. 


S. Army General Hospita 



Sukgeon U. S. Vols., 

In charge of Hospital. 






(F) 



SPECIAL WET RETURN. 



JESS" This form of Return will be used in special cases where the diet may re- 
quire to be frequently varied, and to provide for immediate necessities. As soon 
as possible the patient will be placed upon some one of the regular diets. This 
form will also be used for all applications for milk punch, egg-nog, wine-whey, etc., 
stating the dose, and frequency of administration. These returns must in all cases 
be filled out as well as signed by the Medical Officer. 



186- 



Wabd. 



BREAKFAST. 



Acting Assist. Surgeon, U. S. A. 



